According to a Federal Reserve Board (FRB) survey of more than 2500 consumers, 48 percent of all smartphone owners used mobile banking services at least once in 2012, up from 42 percent in December 2011.
Beyond mobile banking, the use of mobile devices to make payments at the point of sale (POS) tripled over the same time period, increasing from two to six percent of all smartphone owners. Moreover, almost half of the mobile phone owners who do not use mobile banking expressed an interest in doing so, and almost a quarter of all mobile phone owners expressed interest in mobile payments at the POS.
These results corroborate the results of those in a number of similar surveys. Mercator Advisory Group’s October 2012 CustomerMonitor Survey showed that 49 percent of smartphone owners received account information via mobile banking, and 21 percent had used their phones to make bank transactions. It is clear that Americans have adopted mobile banking; now the question is when mobile payments will follow.