Online Banking Via Mobile Devices Growing

Access to mobile banking is growing so rapidly that a substantial percentage of users are accessing their mobile accounts from home on their smartphones and handsets rather than their PCs at home, according to a report from comScore Inc.

In its inaugural report on the Mobile Financial Services Market released Thursday, the market research firm said respondents to its survey examining the use of mobile banking access on mobile phones and 3G service, found that 31% accessed financial accounts on mobile phones at home. The next largest percentage -- 25% -- accessed accounts while running errands. Other times and places from which respondents accessed their bank accounts were: while commuting, 15%; at work, 11%; on vacation, 9%; and business travel, 8%.

"The increasing adoption of smartphones and access to 3G networks, along with the rapid development of mobile apps, have created a fertile environment for the acceleration of mobile banking," said Marc Trudeau, comScore senior director, in a statement. "A seamless mobile banking user experience is necessary for this behavior to take hold, and the convergence of (the) technologies is now making mobile phones a viable access point for personal banking transactions."

Noting that the mobile banking experience is highly dependent upon device technology such as smartphones and high-bandwidth 3G networks, comScore said that 44.1% of respondents in the study accessed their financial accounts via Internet browsers while 40.6% used applications to access their accounts. Another 25% of mobile banking customers used SMS texting to access their accounts.

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