UK mobile banking market to grow by half through 2013

The UK mobile banking market is currently used by approximately 10 million consumers, with this amount expected to grow by nearly half by the end of 2013.

The combination of smart phone adoption and improvements in access speed means customers are increasingly comfortable with completing more, and more complex, transactions via their mobile.

After slow growth in 2010, consumer adoption of mobile banking technology skyrocketed in 2011. Reports suggest that 11.9% of UK consumers now use their mobiles to make payments online, double what it was 12 months ago.

Many customer segments are clearly getting comfortable with using mobile banking. It is particularly true of the Generation Y group (18-32 year olds) who are three times more likely to adopt mobile banking than older users.

Moreover, mobile banking is instrumental in building lasting relationships with Generation Y customers. According to recent YouGov research, one in four Generation Y consumers said their opinion of their bank would improve if it offered mobile financial services.

Mobile banking is still in its early adoption phase, and a large section of the population remains concerned about security and fraud risk. Banks will need to tackle these perceptions.

Equally, as mobile becomes more mainstream, banks must work hard to stay ahead of the fraudsters by providing ever stronger protection. New methods will be needed that do not compromise the experience in the way that current two-factor authentication, calculator-based security does.

The future looks extremely bright for the industry as one-third of UK consumers expect to be using smartphones to do all their banking by 2020, while two-thirds of banks expect everyone to be using mobile banking in some capacity by 2017.

For more information on the UK mobile banking market, see the latest research: UK Mobile Banking Market

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