We recently featured Malauzai founder Rob Gaynor on our "3 Questions With" series, and he offered some great insight into the mobile banking sector. Today we received a monthly update from the firm on general data they have collected over the past month on mobile and internet banking trends. The one we found most interesting is that when it comes to payments, people do indeed use their mobile phones for smaller transfer amounts, but if they're transferring larger amounts of money, the prefer to use a tablet or their desktop and typically move amounts 250% larger than those moved on cell phones.

(Cindy Taylor, Publisher)

"Malauzai Software, a leader in mobile and internet banking, today released its monthly Monkey Insights “little-data” report, the report where an overwhelming amount of big data surrounding Mobile Banking and Internet Banking is broken up into digestible analytic “factoids” that are called little data. The report highlights key trends in internet and mobile banking usage based on February 2017 data for 425+ banks & credit unions, covering 10.8 million logins from 690,000 active Internet and Mobile Banking users.

This report highlights data related to the different digital channels; iPhones, Android Smartphones, iPads and Desktop via Browser. There are HUGE differences from device to device. Huge. The usage IS NOT exclusive, as many end-users are registered on multiple platforms. This report highlights how they behave when using the various platforms.

• Sessions are 1:15 for Mobile and 2:45 for Internet. That’s over a whole lot of usage so those are good numbers. More than double for Internet than for Mobile Banking. People get in quick on mobile and tend to dwell on the desktop. And THIS IS NOT because of functionality as in almost all cases, mobile has functional parity with Internet. Been that way for a while, like years. Shame on you if you don’t today have functional parity between Internet and Mobile, for shame Community Banking Executive, for shame…
• Platform Usage Still Favors iPhone. 57% of active mobile banking end-users are using an iPhone. 43% are using an Android Smartphone. While this still favors iPhone, it is equalizing. Over the past 18-months, Android has gained ground starting at 37% of the active users. iPad tablets stay low at approximately 3% of active mobile banking and digital banking users. There are many stories of tablets sales slowing, and this is reflected in aggregate mobile banking data as well.
• Mobile Users Log In 150% More Frequently Than Desktop/Internet. Smartphone end-users logged in 18 times per month in February. Desktop users logged in 8 times. Mobile usage is much more frequent, and they are not exclusive, as Internet Banking users use mobile and Mobile Banking users use the desktop. iPad end-users round out the bunch logging in 7.5 times in February. So in general, large format devices are 2 times a week and small format is 4.5 times a week. Last factoid. For those end-users in quick balance mode, where they can see their balances WITHOUT performing an actual login with password and ID, these end users log in 36 times a month, yes, you got it, more than once a day. Very engaged users.
• Business Usage – Stuck On Internet. The biggest story is that businesses are stuck on the traditional desktop channel. Less than 10% of active usage when looking at log in activity is via an iPhone, all other is desktop. For money movement it is even worse. Topping the list is ACH Origination or payments, of which 10% were from an iPhone. Less than 0.25 percent of wires were done on a phone. And just 2% of ACH Batch processing (approvals etc) took place on a mobile device. Business users are also exclusively iPhone. Very few use an Android device. iPad is up there just above Android. Log in duration is over 5 minutes so double a typical consumer.
• Log In Time Of Day. Consumers start logging in around 7 am and go all day falling off again at 7 pm with peak usage at noon and 4 pm. Usage is steady all day, slowly falling off and just kind of stops at 9 pm. Businesses log in most frequently at 10 am on Monday. Usage starts at 8 am and runs til 4 pm and abruptly stops. Business digital is used by employees, they go home. There is very little usage of Business Digital from 6pm til the following morning.
• Large Format Large Dollars!!! When people are on a large format device like an iPad or moving money from their desktop, they move much larger values of money, 250% larger values…. That is a huge difference. We tracked 988,000 money movements in February. This includes transfers, billpay, check deposits, P2P, etc. Everything where money is moved. 50% of the total money movements were made by iPhone users. SO people do use the small device to pay, but clearly they trust larger formats more…. Interesting…"Source: Malauzai