I was just writing a paragraph about mobile for a client's report, when I realised what I had written:
This year has seen dramatic innovations in mobile usage, such as those of the Bank of America in the USA. According to Doug Brown, SVP at Bank of America responsible for their mobile banking channel, they saw 300 percent growth in mobile customers from 2007 to 2008, and had 2.2 million active mobile banking customers in April 2009 rising to 3.5 million by November.
This is due to rapid take-up during 2009 with 150,000 new mobile customers in September, 210,000 in August and 220,000 in July.
No wonder Bank of America are claiming that they have 35% of all mobile banking users in the USA, with 150,000 new deposit accounts opened purely because they offer this service.
Many of the numbers came from Jim Bruene's write-up of this year's BAI event.
At the same event in 2003, I asked the US banking audience when mobile would take off in banking, and they all said it was too insecure.
"Not in my lifetime" said one banker, whilst another said, "maybe ten or twenty years, but it would take Wal*Mart or Virgin to make it happen".
Wrong.
It was Bank of America.
They launched in August 2007 (less than three years after those comments) and had 500,000 customers by November 2007 and a million by June 2008.
Now they have 3.5 million.
Astounding!
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
