Mobile Banking in the United States: The Evolution of Anywhere Banking

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1 Mobile Banking in the United States: The Evolution of Anywhere Banking by Andy Castonguay, Christopher Collins, and Jon Paisner November 2007 Executive Summary For the banking and financial services sector in the United States, mobile phones represent the last great, mostly untapped channel for direct interaction with their customers. Mobile banking solutions have the potential to provide anytime access to private, sensitive financial information and allow consumers to perform real-time transactions with their financial accounts from any location. For many US banks, the current wave of mobile banking launches may elicit memories of failed mobile service experiments dating back as recently as Since that period, however, the mobile landscape in the United States has changed dramatically, and in a manner very favorable to mobile banking services adoption. In the United States, the potential addressable market for mobile banking solutions is enormous, having grown to more than 200 million consumers who use both traditional banking services and mobile phone services. Not only has mobile telephony become ubiquitous in the United States, but the market is also boasting record growth of mobile messaging and data services, greatly expanding the technical options for mobile banking service delivery. Even with these fundamental market improvements, financial institutions (FIs) face significant technical and business model challenges in exploiting this channel in a manner that will offer consumers a secure and compelling service, drive incremental adoption of banking services, reduce the costs to serve these clients and extend the FI s brand beyond existing banking channels such as branches, ATMs and online banking. Mobile banking development may be characterized along three distinct stages of interactions between FIs and their banking customers and across a broad spectrum of delivery models. As shown in Exhibit 1, these interactions extend from lower-value activities (such as simple account balance inquiries) that require limited interactivity, to moderate-value activities (such as integrated mobile account management) that are enabled through additional interactivity and security, to highest-value activities (such as contextual marketing and direct up-selling of bank services) that leverage advanced technologies and emerging business models. Exhibit 1 The Evolution of Mobile Banking Interactions Source: Yankee Group, 2007 Customer Value Stage Two: Driving Usage and Retention Through Adoption of Interactive Banking Services Stage One: Driving Consumer Awareness and Convenience Through Simple Account Access Stage Three: Driving Profitability Through Adoption of New Services Time to Execute and Deliver Value This custom publication has been sponsored by Research In Motion. This Yankee Group Report is published for the sole use of Yankee Group clients. It may not be duplicated, reproduced or transmitted in whole or in part without the express permission of Yankee Group, Prudential Tower, 800 Boylston Street, 27th Floor, Boston, MA For more information, contact Yankee Group: info@yankeegroup.com; phone: All rights reserved. All opinions and estimates herein constitute our judgment as of this date and are subject to change without notice.

2 Executive Summary (Continued) The majority of the US banking industry is firmly entrenched in stages one and two of the mobile banking evolution, with the bulk of current services providing a growing but still limited level of interaction. Most US banks are engaged in a mobile banking arms race to quickly deploy mobile services in response to the recent launch of mobile banking initiatives by top retail banks such as Bank of America and Citibank. The rush to introduce solutions greatly increases the risk that these early deployments will underperform by failing to provide enough interactive capabilities, by being too difficult to use, or by failing to exploit the revenue-generating potential of the mobile channel. To avoid repeating the failures of past years, US banks must develop solutions that are operator independent, work within the limits of device technology and offer a robust experience regardless of access means. Given the tremendous potential for mobile services to reach clients in a real-time, always-with-you interactive manner, successful US banks will need to view mobility as a channel to holistic, integrate with other service channels, and develop mobility into an effective and dynamic sales driver. Although mobile banking can provide similar benefits to online banking, such as cost-efficiency and reduced customer churn, the greatest opportunity lies in enhancing relationships with high-touch clients and extending the marketing reach of banks to new customer segments. The fixed internet provides a costefficient banking channel for 40% of retail banking customers in the United States. But international case studies demonstrate the even greater capacity of mobile banking to penetrate much of the 60% of the retail banking market that remains unconnected, and to drive services usage and increase revenue through improved cross-selling of new services. In a highly competitive banking market facing consolidation and increased encroachment from traditional financial services and insurance companies, mobile services offer banks a dynamic means of improving both the access clients have with their financial accounts and services as well as allowing banks to expand the reach and quality of their communications with banking customers anytime, anywhere. 2

3 Table of Contents I. Economic and Business Model Drivers Successfully Generating Incremental Revenue and Service Adoption through Mobile Banking: A Market Case Study II. Defining the Addressable Market in the United States Limited Consumer Awareness and Use of Mobile Services III. Technology Drivers SMS Mobile Banking Mobile Browser-Based Banking Custom Application Device Clients for Mobile Banking Security Considerations IV. Implications and Conclusion

4 I. Economic and Business Model Drivers As discussed above, the term mobile banking describes the three different stages of interactions between FIs and banking consumers, with each stage utilizing different technologies, targeting different banking segments and providing different levels of value to FIs and their customers. Exhibit 2 summarizes the key aspects of each stage. The first stage of this banking evolution includes basic mobile banking solutions, from the simple pull of account information to the push of alerts and branding messages. Examples of this include accessing a directory of ATM and branch locations, receiving information alerts or viewing account balances for existing checking, savings, 401(k) and brokerage accounts. Although most of these services will be accessed via a continuously connected mobile device, a persistent mobile data session with the bank is not necessary. These types of services will be the least complicated and least expensive to deploy, but like many first-generation banking services launched before 2002, this level of service risks being of limited appeal to the majority of banking customers. Although the growing adoption of text messaging and SMS culture in the United States improves the likelihood of Stage One service adoption over previous mobile banking deployments, long-term value generation will result from swift evolution to greater levels of interaction. Exhibit 2 Detailed Summary of Mobile Banking Stages Source: Yankee Group, 2007 Primary Activities Target Segment Value to Bank Stage One: Simple Inquiry Access balances Banking customers with limited service usage, younger, mobile phone savvy Branding, service cost reduction Stage Two: Interactive Banking Execute trades, transfer funds, pay bills, self-service, financial market information discovery Higher income, technology savvy, banking clients with multiple bank services Potential for cost-effective retention of high net worth clients, cross-sell/up-sell Stage Three: Driving Profitability Contextual, location-aware marketing, mobile transactions, greater levels of self-service Early adopters (at first), all consumers (eventually) Transaction revenue, advertising revenue, crosssell/up-sell The second stage of this evolution extends banking to interactive push-and-pull transactions enabled by more advanced client-side technologies such as Java, BREW, open OSs (e.g., Windows Mobile or Symbian) and WAP. This includes bill payment, fund transfers, buying and selling stocks, funds or currency, stop payment notices, financial market information research and alerts for things such as bill due dates or stock price activity. This stage of banking activity is clearly delineated by the added level of access clients gain to assess and manipulate their accounts, benefitting customers of more sophisticated financial services 24 hours a day from any location. While the majority of current US mobile banking deployments and upcoming launches incorporate elements of Stage Two interactivity, the ease-of-use, utility and sticky nature of these services will be crucial to achieving adoption success. The third stage in the evolution of mobile services does more than extend online banking to a mobile device; it leverages the mobile channel to offer additional services to customers and generate incremental services revenue. In the short term, this type of activity will take place largely around simple marketing efforts such as advertisements for and provisioning of banking services and products, but during the next 2 to 3 years the unique and dynamic potential of mobile devices promises to enable new business models for banks as well. These services include loyalty programs, mobile payments, couponing and interactive marketing initiatives, among others. The success of these services will build on the foundation of ubiquitous and continuous connectivity by incorporating advanced analytics, location-based services (LBS) via GPS, advanced user interfaces, broadband network access and additional embedded technologies (RFID, NFC, SIP) to provide services that are contextually aware of factors such as the consumer s income, banking relationships, location and buying history with vendors. Value to Customer 24x7 convenience, anywhere access to account information Speed, real-time access and transaction capability New services, loyalty rewards Enabling Technology SMS, Java SMS, Java, WAP Java, WAP, GPS 4

5 Successfully Generating Incremental Revenue and Service Adoption through Mobile Banking: A Market Case Study To best understand how to capitalize on this opportunity, US banks should look to the mobile banking services offered in a number of international markets. For example, the evolution of mobile banking at Spain s Bankinter highlights the value that banks can achieve in the short term. Since its launch of SMS-based services in 2003, the percentage of Bankinter clients that has registered for its SMS services has increased to 69% of its retail base as of April 2007, allowing the bank to connect to 630,900 users with an estimated 53.2 million SMS messages/per year. In addition to growing its base of SMS users, since 2005, Bankinter has also supported 96,000 clients with its XTML-based banking services, which generated 127% year-on-year growth in traffic from April 2006 to April In addition to reporting high adoption rates, Bankinter has also shown that its mobile banking solution accelerated the demand for revenue-generating banking services. Bankinter has leveraged the additional and dynamic customer interface of mobile phones to drive cross-selling opportunities. Between December 2003 and December 2006, Bankinter expanded the average number of bank products per client by 15.4%, from 5.59% to 6.45%. In addition to the overall increase of banking services, the dynamic nature of Bankinter s mobile solution has also driven increased usage, exceeding the use of online banking services. This is particularly important with brokerage clients: Bankinter s mobile-browser based services have not only enabled more frequent access to the service, but have also driven 50% more trade volume compared with the company s online brokerage service. II. Defining the Addressable Market in the United States The potential market for mobile banking solutions is considerable with the market growing to 228 million unique mobile US consumers during With the tremendous overlap of banking accounts and mobile services usage, the addressable market for mobile banking is substantial and will continue to expand through We believe mobile banking will demonstrate similar growth characteristics and customer adoption rates to online banking applications, which have grown from approximately 10.5 million households in 1999 to 42 million households during 2006, according to the February 2007 Online Banking Report. Unlike deployments before 2002, current mobile services adoption characteristics have created a fertile foundation for mobile banking to find greater acceptance. The mobile landscape has expanded from 49% penetration in 2002 to an expected 76% of the US population by year-end The array of SMS- and WAP-capable devices has also grown significantly. The Yankee Group Anywhere Consumer: 2007 US Devices Survey found that 88% of phones in service today are SMS- and internet-ready, offering the appropriate screen sizes and processing power to enable the mobile banking services discussed in this report. 5

6 Limited Consumer Awareness and Use of Mobile Services The capability to enable robust mobile banking solutions is in place due to the installed base of internet-ready devices; but this capability alone is is necessary but insufficient to create consumer demand or awareness. Yankee Group consumer survey research has shown that awareness is a significant barrier to adoption for many mobile users. The results of the Yankee Group Anywhere Consumer: 2007 US Web/Data Survey demonstrate that consumers are not familiar with key mobile phone functionality. For an example, as many as 51% of consumers claim to not be able to do such things as browse the internet on their mobile phone. 41% report being unable to send and receive , and 21% state that they are unable to send and receive text messages using their mobile phone. These results and statements are inconsistent with what the device manufacturers and carriers offer and suggest a significant gap in consumer understanding of true service availability. Additionally, one-quarter of all consumers surveyed has these same features, but chooses not to use them. In fact, despite near-ubiquitous availability of mobile internetcapable phones, only 10% of consumers use mobile browsing on a monthly basis. An even smaller group, just 3.9% of consumers, uses their phone to browse the internet on a daily basis. Despite the growth of SMS, just 23.1% use their phone to send or receive text messages on a daily basis. These low adoption figures are driven by insufficient market education on the part of mobile carriers, expensive data pricing and potentially slow data speeds barriers that are being addressed by carriers in the short term. Cost, not surprisingly, is the biggest barrier. Approximately half of consumers said that mobile internet access was too expensive and another 22% didn t know what the cost would be. Because less than 10% of consumers has an unlimited data plan, cost will continue to be a barrier for a long time. Additionally, slow data speeds also represent a barrier to adoption for 18% of consumers. Given the modest adoption of mobile internet services to date and, considering that relatively few FIs have active mobile banking initiatives, it is not surprising that only 2.8% of all US consumers and 22% of consumers using the mobile internet report using mobile banking solutions. Despite being in the early stages today, the intersection of mobile technology-savvy consumers, high-income households and banking services represent the most relevant and highest value mobile banking opportunity to US banks in the near term. Consumers who use SMS or browse the mobile internet represent attractive banking customers. Usage characteristics suggest there is solid potential for SMS and mobile internetbased banking solutions, in spite of modest early adoption. For example, according to the results of the Yankee Group Anywhere Consumer: 2007 US Penetration and Usage Survey, among older consumers age 45 to 54, SMS use on a daily basis is just 12.4%. But, as demonstrated in Exhibit 3, average income is 23% more for consumers who use SMS daily ($60,864) than the average income for that age range ($49,503). Exhibit 3 Characteristics of SMS and WAP (Internet Access) Users Sources: Yankee Group 2007 Mean Income Percentage Using at Least Once a Day YOY Growth Rate Total 18 to to to to to and Older Total 18 to to to to to and Older Overall Total Total Population $46,640 $ 31,716 $47,476 $52,535 $49,503 $48,362 $40,598 SMS 23.1% 49.8% 36.9% 23.3% 12.4% 5.5% 2.4% 76.7% SMS $47,704 $31,627 $50,064 $56,178 $60,864 $55,938 $48,438 WAP (Internet Access) 3.9% 6.4% 8.0% 4.3% 1.7% 0.06% 0.8% 46.6% WAP (Internet Access) $57,884 $43,397 $55,513 $70,000 $60,500 $94,167 $68,333 6

7 Similarly, only 4.3% of consumers age 35 to 44 use the mobile internet on a daily basis, but those who do earn 33% more ($70,000) than the average for all consumers of the same age ($52,535). This demonstrates a high correlation between income and SMS and mobile internet usage, which is particularly relevant to mobile banking service providers. Exhibit 4 Announced and Launched Mobile Banking Initiatives in the United States Sources: Banks, Solution Providers, Yankee Group, 2007 III. Technology Drivers The list of FIs launching or announcing a future launch of mobile banking services grows larger every day. Not surprisingly, these early initiatives utilize different solutions to provide different levels of value to their banking customers. As shown in Exhibit 4, the vast majority of banks have deployed or will soon deploy SMS- or Java-based approaches (Bank of America is the only major bank to deploy a WAP browserbased approach). Financial Institution Synovus Bank of America BancorpSouth SunTrust Wachovia Citibank Announcement Date Nov-06 Feb-07 Mar-07 Mar-07 Mar-07 Apr-07 Launch Date July-07 Jun-07 TBA TBA TBA Apr-07 Application Java WAP Java Java Java Java Provider Firethorn In-House Firethorn Firethorn Firethorn mfoundry These different approaches to mobile banking provide varied levels of performance and security methods to banking customers and therefore are best suited to address different mobile banking consumer segments. Accordingly, each approach offers unique benefits to FIs. As demonstrated in Exhibit 5, each technology addresses a particular market of users, each with its own user interface capabilities and bank services growth potential. Bank of Stockton May-07 TBA SMS ClairMail First Data BB&T Aug-07 Oct-07 TBA TBA Java Java/ SMS mfoundry mfoundry/ ClairMail Exhibit 5 Comparative Value of Mobile Banking Solutions Source: Yankee Group, 2007 SMS Addressable Market Sophistication of User Interface/Ease-of-Use Bank Services Growth Potential Strength of Security Mobile Browser Custom Client 7

8 SMS Mobile Banking The delivery model that will reach the greatest percentage of potential customers is SMS because it already is ubiquitously available across almost all handsets in North America. The current addressable market within the North America is 97.3 million users who use SMS on a monthly basis, according to Yankee Group s 2007 Link Data: North American Consumer Forecast. Since SMS is a delivery method consumers are already comfortable using today, it is a channel well-suited to alerts, notifications, simple transactions and lowrisk inquiries. However, SMS does not provide as rich a user experience as the other mobile banking delivery models. This can limit the ability of SMS-based models to facilitate more advanced banking activity, and will not compel less savvy mobile subscribers to adopt this method of mobile banking. SMS-based models would potentially require consumers to learn and remember various short codes to perform simple tasks (like viewing an account balance or transferring money), making more complicated tasks less intuitive and more time-consuming. An additional hurdle to SMS-based mobile banking is network performance. The current US SMS delivery performance is neither 100% reliable nor guaranteed to be delivered in a timely fashion. Mobile Browser-Based Banking The WAP browser interface generally allows a more robust user experience than SMS-based solutions. While its graphic user interface facilitates more complex activities, the speed of information and visual rendering of the banking site is fundamentally dependent on the existence and speed of the mobile device s data access. This challenge may be mitigated with nascent, but broadening availability of on-device-portal technologies that leverage sophisticated caching and rendering techniques to improve the online mobile experience. As referenced above, active WAP users currently represent only a fraction of overall mobile phone users in the United States, and the solution has only been deployed by one major bank: Bank of America. Yankee Group estimates that during 2007, the number of internet-capable phones in use in North America approached 90% of all phones. Ninety-three percent of all 2007 handset sales or 156 million phones are expected to support advanced markup languages such as xhtml, KHTML, or full HTML browsers during Of those handsets, however, only 19.5 million consumers in North America will pay for a mobile internet package to gain the access necessary to benefit from WAP-based mobile banking. Although the WAP-based approach allows for solid user interaction, banks that choose to deliver banking services only through this solution will greatly limit the adoption success of their mobile banking initiative in the short term. 8

9 Custom Application Device Clients for Mobile Banking The most utilized technology approach for US mobile banking initiatives to date has been based on common mobile execution environments, namely Java ME and BREW. With steady increases in sophistication over time, these two environments have achieved essential ubiquity in the installed base of mobile devices. The Yankee Group forecasts that more than 90% of the installed base of subscribers will have Java ME or BREW-capable handsets by the end of Native applications or those written for open OS environments such as Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm or BlackBerry (Java-based) offer greater performance to a limited, albeit more desirable and quickly expanding subscriber base. A custom application device client can deliver a rich, robust, personalized experience that is visually more sophisticated than SMS, rivaling or besting the visual sophistication of WAP services. A device-based client has the advantage of maintaining a visual interface without depending on the internet for visual rendering. As a result, this application downloaded to the phone can enable banks to develop a highly customized experience without the potential drawbacks of variable internet connection speeds. The target audience for this approach will have sophisticated feature phones or smart phones capable of running such an application. Yankee Group s 2007 Link Data: Global Mobile Forecast states that 13.1 million advanced OS phones are in the hands of consumers in North America this year and this market is expected to grow to 43.5 million by The use of a device client application is an excellent model for an FI looking to deliver a customizable and unique user interface to their customer base for top-end devices. The downside to this approach is the significant cost potentially involved with creating customized versions of the application client for each service provider and the multitude of handsets that work on the service provider s network. This becomes an increasingly daunting task when you begin to consider the security and functionality updates that FIs will roll out over time. Also, a client application still needs to have an SMS or data engine as part of the functionality to handle alerts and notifications, and provide low-level information. The customer experience, a function of network speed and client-side presentation at the UI layer, will play a large role in the consumer adoption of this model as the speed to load the application and transition from the functions, such as switching from bill pay to balance inquiry, is crucial to ensuring consumer satisfaction and adoption. 9

10 Security Considerations As with online banking channels, dynamic security will be paramount for mobile banking services to gain consumer confidence, meet Federal Financial Institution Examination Council (FFIEC) compliance standards and minimize the liability for the FIs. For mobile banking service providers to offer a secure handshake between the mobile handset and FI server, all data that is transmitted during a mobile banking session must be encrypted and adhere to two-factor authentication processes. Given the strong potential for consumer concern over the secure nature of mobile transactions, mobile banking initiatives must carefully balance the protection of clients private and sensitive data with providing a smooth user experience for authentication. Mobile phones provide a number of potential models for two-factor security that meet basic security requirements but approach authentication in unique ways. The three primary categories of two-factor mobile authentication include the following: 1. Online password-based authentication over mobile browsers 2. Out-of-band approaches involving SMS, SIM-card or vault-based authentication 3. Out-of-band, one-time password (OTP) methods utilizing an application client on the mobile device Although all three methods comply with FFIEC standards, OTP s ability to generate one-time, random passwords that are synchronously coordinated with an FI s server offers the strongest level of security among mobile options. In addition, device-based OTP applications can utilize either SMS or internet connections to establish secure authentication, making the solution applicable to the vast majority of US mobile users. Browser access models offer a uniform experience of entering authentication credentials with online banking, which facilitates process familiarity by online banking users. However, FIs should encourage browser-based clients to validate the website that they are accessing from their mobile handset and reduce the occurrence of fraud through mobile malware and phishing. Solutions that rely exclusively on SMS as the means of transport offer broad potential for consumer adoption due to the large base of SMS-based devices in use, but will suffer from variable reliability of SMS delivery in the United States. SIM card-based solutions would also have restricted application as the solution would limit banks to serve only 38% of the US market using global standard for mobile (GSM) devices. In order to benefit the entire ecosystem, mobile banking providers must move quickly to develop industry standards that ensure swift and secure authentication and retrieval of account data for mobile phones. Similar to the success of VeriSign s secure online transactions for internet payments, banks will benefit from partnerships with well-recognized and trusted brands in either security or the mobile services industry to help improve consumer s acceptance of the mobile banking process. Mobile vaults provide an additional means of a secure handshake through a trusted third-party. This approach would provide a secure storage of a consumer s banking and financial services information from one or more FIs. With a single secure authentication to the vault, a consumer would then be able to gain access to all the sites with that customer s stored credentials. The vault would then initiate secure handshakes with each individual financial services company as necessary. Financial institutions could potentially benefit from vaultoriented services through partnerships with well-recognized and trusted brands in either security or the mobile services industry to help improve consumer s acceptance of this authentication process. 10

11 V. Implications and Conclusion Although mobile phones represent the greatest untapped channel for banking services delivery and interaction with clients, the development of mobile banking strategies must carefully match channel potential with a bank s customer segmentation in order to derive the greatest return on investment. Based upon the sharp correlation between income levels, mobile-services savvy and appetite for more sophisticated banking services, the greatest short-term opportunity for US banks is to initia lly target consumers between the ages of 25 to 55 with incomes of more than $50,000 per year. Strong SMS and browser usage by consumers with these characteristics suggests that by embracing only a single technological solution to mobile banking, US FIs will limit the adoption of mobile services and their ability to benefit from them. Given the complexities of mobile data access, device types and current usage behavior, banks must invest in multiple technology platforms to be able to reach and satisfy their most prized customers and improve their interaction with lower-value clients. While standalone WAP and application client approaches will provide a solid level of interaction for clients, dynamically integrating SMS-based interaction and alerts with a WAP- and application-based solution will provide the greatest combination of service coverage and valuable client interaction. FIs must develop strategies that move beyond a focus on retention and cost reduction and embrace mobile banking as a channel to generate revenue and value for banking customers. Our interviews with Tier 1 US banks indicate that in today s market mobile banking is seen primarily as a necessary response to other banks deployments and a potential means to reduce operating expenses (e.g., interactive voice response systems and tellers) and customer churn. Banks that cling to such a conservative view over the coming quarters will squander the solid potential for revenue generation that mobile banking can deliveras a dynamic marketing and sales channel for products such as insurance, investment brokerage, identity protection, fraud avoidance or alerts, mortgage and credit products. The personal, always-connected nature of mobility will also allow banks to leverage their brand and customer bases to develop integrated loyalty programs with retail and service partners through couponing and other value-oriented offers to consumers. In this manner, banks can take advantage of the dynamic interactive nature of the mobile device not only to extend relevance of its own services among its client base, but also to expand the value that customers associate with its brand to other facets of their lives. 11

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