Can mobile banking cash in?

It's tough to figure out what consumers want when it appears they can't even make up their own minds. On the one hand a new usage and attitudes study [1] conducted by mobile web domain registry dotMobi and digital agency AKQA reports that consumers desire practical, utility-based mobile applications like mobile-optimized banking more than basic entertainment services; according to dotMobi, the volume of subscribers demanding access to mobile banking and related m-commerce services signifies growing trust in the security of the mobile web, with almost two thirds of respondents stating they would consider purchasing theater tickets, take-out food and travel tickets via mobile device.

But on the other hand, another consumer study issued this week, this one conducted by IT and solutions firm Unisys, reports that 71 percent of all consumers surveyed in 14 countries will not yet consider using a mobile device to bank or shop online. According to Unisys, 59 percent of all respondents don't trust their mobile devices to provide a secure transaction and only 9 percent of participants currently feel the mobile platform is safe enough to conduct business like credit card payments, cash transfers and deposits. French consumers are the most reluctant to embrace mobile banking and commerce at 86 percent, followed by the U.K. at 79 percent, Australia at 78 percent, Belgium and Italy at 77 percent each and the U.S. at 71 percent.

So what then to make of news from banking giant Bank of America, which this week announced [2] it now boasts more than 1 million unique active mobile banking customers? Sure, that's nothing compared to its 25 million online banking users, but keep in mind Bank of America only introduced its mobile services in May 2007. Moreover, those 1 million mobile users--two thirds of them under the age of 35 and four out of five under the age of 45--now register over four million mobile banking sessions each month. I don't know how to reconcile the results of the dotMobi study against the contradictory results of the Unisys study, but Bank of America offers actual usage data, not theories and trends drawn from consumer polling--and when you crunch the numbers, it's clear consumers are banking on mobile, both literally and figuratively. -Jason [3]