AUSTIN, Texas–Mobile continues to be the channel driving the most engagement with financial consumers–especially for credit unions that have deployed a “quick balance” feature.
But not so hot: P2P in financial institution offerings, a survey has found.
Malauzai Software’s latest Monkey Insights “little-data” report found that on average, a smartphone user logged in 18 times in September. It is the same for iPhone and Android. For legacy desktop usage (i.e. Internet banking), the average number of logins was 8.5, less than half of mobile.
“Clearly, mobile drives much higher engagement,” the Monkey Insights Report found.
Session duration for mobile rose slightly in September to 1:30 and hovered just over five minutes for a typical Internet banking session.
The survey found that those banks and credit unions that have implemented a “quick-balance” feature that allows consumers to check balances without performing a traditional login (ID and password), those end-users engaged 37 times in September, or on average more than once a day.
Among the other findings (with Malauzai’s analysis included below):
- Mobile RDC (Remote DCapture) is HOT! The average number of deposits is on the rise at 2.75 checks per end user in September. Historically, that number is closer 2.25 per month, so September saw a significant increase. Average value was $592, also up about 10% over the historical average. And once again, large format devices drive higher average values of deposits. “The average deposit value on the iPad is $908 and $710 for the desktop, yes you can make deposits now using Internet banking, about 2% of total deposits come in this way as one of the benefits of tightly syncing mobile and Internet is feature parity. RDC is available on the desktop and some people do choose to use it. Why do large format devices drive higher deposit values? Frankly, we have no idea, but will spin up some primary research on this topic to explore further.”
- Internal Transfers are also HOT! Still, by leaps and bounds, internal transfers rules the day constituting 70% of all consumer money movement digital transactions. Money movement includes; transfers, Bill Pay, RDC, P2P and A2A. And there are those large values on large formats again. “Average transfer value for large format (tablets and desktop) is HUGE! Desktop average value is $1,674 vs iPhone at $512. This is really interesting, people really trust bigger screens, weird! The average number of transfers per month across all devices is 4.2 per end-user.”
- P2P FAILURE! Person-to-Person payments are a huge disappointment. Just to review, about 12% of all banks and credit unions with a mobile app, offer P2P payments in the app. “Usage is really low. On average, just 1.2% of active digital banking users (all devices included) choose to make a P2P payment. Wow, that is really low. This makes P2P a low volume task coming in number 11 in the list of most-used digital banking features. Lots of hype and no results. Zelle, real-time, etc., none of it changes these metrics. The Venmo phenomenon continues to confound us bankers, as clearly it is growing, even if its average transfer value is sub $30. Different type of P2P but way more successful.”
- A2A Up and Coming. The rising star of digital banking money movement is Account-to-Account transfers, where an end-user sends money to themselves at another financial institution. “A2A is seeing a steady rise in usage averaging 3% of active digital users in September. Yes, that is double P2P. And it is growing where P2P is static. The average A2A value in September was $1,120 and the average number of transfers per user was 1.8. 93% of those transfers are outbound, meaning the money is leaving. 7% of A2A is inbound. Hmm, does that show people have excess funds and are saving? More inbound activity would seem to show people need money to shore up their monthly spending. Clearly, A2A users have more money because they are transferring it out of their bank account. This might be great insight into homing in on these users as I bet they end up holding higher balances too, and would have great profitability. Worth a look, so go check it out.”