Mobile banking users to surpass online banking by 2019

Over 1.75 billion mobile phone users will have used their devices for banking purposes by the end of 2019, compared to 800 million this year. Juniper Research noted that mobile banking technology is currently available in most regions of the world, driven by exceptional consumer demand, especially in the developed regions.

Emerging countries such as China, India and Bangladesh also witnessed significant growth in the past 12 months, said the market research firm.

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"The level of maturity in number and innovation of services being offered in the market across several geographical areas, demonstrates that banks now regard the mobile channel as an indispensable revenue-stream. However, with the mobile channel becoming a key customer retention strategy, it presents a great challenge to traditional institutions," reported author Nitin Bhas added.

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The scale of this challenge has been confirmed by the decreasing number of branch visits by consumers and also the closure of physical bank branches over the past 12-24 months.

The report also claimed that nearly 100 percent of the banks analysed had some sort of mobile (SMS, browser and app based) and online banking offering, with almost every bank having apps available for at least one smartphone OS.

Banking apps are ranked highly amongst the most downloaded financial apps in different app stores, with banks reporting high number of average logins per month per user.