Bill Pay, Mobile Deposit Among the Most Popular Features of Banks’ Mobile Apps

Bill payment continues to reign as the most-used payments feature of banks’ mobile apps, but mobile deposit and person-to-person payments are coming on strong, according to new findings from research firm Celent and FI Navigator Corp.

The “Mobile Banking Quantified” study by Celent, a division of New York City-based of Oliver Wyman Inc., with data from Atlanta-based FI Navigator, examined publicly available services as of Sept. 30 from nearly 6,900 financial institutions, including the apps, software, and related technology supplied by 48 vendors, processors, and credit-union-service organizations. Driven by more uptake from small institutions, some 57% of banks and credit unions now offer a mobile-banking app, up from 52% in just six months, according to the findings. Overall customer enrollment in mobile banking increased from 25.3% to 27.6%.

Payments functionality in the apps varied widely. But bill payment, which is offered by 87.7% of financial institutions with a mobile app, was by far the leader among the eight payment services examined and the fourth most common of all app features. Next in payments was mobile deposit, enabled by 65.6% of the apps. A distant third was person-to-person payments at 22.1%.

Deposit capability is one of the fastest-growing features of mobile apps. Some 497 banks and credit unions added that feature in the year ending Sept. 30, and 561 did so in the preceding 12 months. Some 257 financial institutions have added P2P payments in the past year.

Bill payment and mobile deposits are the first and third most potent services that banks and credit unions can offer to spur adoption of their mobile-banking apps, with fingerprint authentication ranking second, the study found.

Only 3.5% of the apps offered interbank automated clearing house or wire transfers. Less than 1% of institutions offered any of four other payment services through their mobile apps: bill presentment, credit card management, photo-based bill pay, and prepaid card management. In all payment services, adoption by big financial services tended to be higher, often much higher, than adoption by their smaller brethren.

Another much-discussed new feature of banks’ mobile apps is cardless cash, a service that enables the customer to withdraw cash from ATMs without using a debit card. The Celent/FI Navigator survey found that only 0.1% of financial institutions currently offer that service.

Fast-growing non-payments features in banks’ mobile apps include quick balance displays, offered by 26.7% of apps in September versus only 7.5% in March, and fingerprint authentication, 13% versus 10.6%. Every app offered views of account balances, while 98.7% enabled account transfers and 94.4% provided transaction histories.

A Celent analyst was unavailable for comment Thursday morning.