Just How Important Is Mobile Banking?
On his blog, Javelin's James Van Dyke writes about mobile banking and the current wait-and-see attitude evidenced by many mid-market and smaller banks, credit unions and card issuers. Van Dyke thinks that "very soon, you may not have a business that reaches vital consumer segments if your business isn’t available via mobile devices." [Editor's Note: Makes me wonder - who is the smallest US financial institution to have adopted mobile banking to date?]
I seriously doubt that adopting or not adopting a mobile strategy is life-threatening to most financial institutions today. Unlike ATM adoption, US users seem fairly indifferent about mobile banking. I would agree that for many businesses a mobile strategy is a must. At the very least, optimizing your site for mobile users is a must. I think users will adopt various levels of "mobile banking" over a longer period of time than perhaps Van Dyke suggests - mobile banking being very loosely defined, starting with the most basic of simply receiving text message balance updates (which is what most folks seem to want).
Posted by: Scott Oppliger | December 26, 2008 at 11:12 AM