WASHINGTON—A survey from the Federal Reserve district banks found 89% of financial institutions already offer mobile banking services to their members and customers. It also revealed that more credit unions market mobile banking services to underbanked consumers than banks.
The report on the 2016 Mobile Financial Services Survey, released this month, led by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, included responses from financial institutions in seven districts. Of the 706 institutions that participated in the survey, 186 were credit unions.
The survey found that 97% of financial institutions plan to offer mobile banking services by this year. Credit unions are more likely than banks to support specialized mobile banking features such as credit card account services: A majority of credit union respondents (53%) currently offer mobile credit card account services compared to only 12% of banks, reported NAFCU in its analysis.
About one-third of credit unions said they currently market mobile banking services to underbanked consumers, with an additional 25% planning to market the services in the next two years. Only 22% of banks currently market the services, with about the same amount planning to within two years, NAFCU said.
Respondents revealed their primary concern with providing mobile banking services is consumers not protecting their own information. In order to prevent potential breaches, more than 80% said their mobile banking platform has inactivity timeouts, multi-factor authentication and mobile alerts, NAFCU said.
While mobile banking is readily available from financial institutions, only 24% currently offer mobile payments. However, an additional 40% indicated plans to offer mobile payments by 2018, NAFCU noted.
In addition, strong majorities of respondents said their financial institution would support various mobile wallets by 2018: 99% would support Apple Pay, 84% Android Pay and 70% Samsung Pay.