67% of UK smartphone owners don’t do any banking on their mobile phone, with a further 13% saying they “don’t do very much” mobile banking. That’s one of the findings of a new survey commissioned by outsourcing company Firstsource Solutions and carried out by YouGov.
Over half of all respondents (55%) say they’re afraid their personal bank details will not be kept secure, while 35% are put off by the size of smartphone screens. In addition, 20% struggle with the security checks and 10% are unhappy with mobile banking apps.
Consumers have similar fears when it comes to using smartphones in place of credit or debit cards. 58% said they were unlikely to ‘swipe’ their smartphone to make payments, with 67% worried their bank details would not be secure and 22% not believing the technology will work.
Although younger smartphone owners are more open to the ‘mobile wallet’ - 42% of under-25s said they’d use their smartphone like a credit card to make payments if they were able to - the majority (52%) said they were unlikely to do this, with most of them citing security concerns.
Iain Regan, Global Head of Sales & Marketing at Firstsource Solutions, said “Banks want to make engagement easier and encourage consumers to use banking services more often and the prevalence of smartphones and internet speed improvements should increase the use of mobile banking. However it seems that there are still challenges to the widespread adoption of mobile banking. Customers still have a lack of trust in mobile banking security which banks need to overcome by providing reassurance of security while at the same time making security procedures intuitive and easy to use. This challenge can be overcome, but banks will need to make banking applications more user friendly while at the same time ensuring security. This is quite a challenge that will need banks, software developers, security experts, as well as customer service specialists to collaborate in order to convince their customers to adopt mobile banking services.”