MMA: Good news for m-commerce, consumer comfort with mobile banking on increase

Of the 1,000 U.S. adults surveyed, 92% owned a mobile phone and 19% of those said they currently conducted banking via their devices. That figure equates to 17% of all American adult consumers.

The MMA survey results also suggested that usage will grow to 22% by the end of 2011.

The main channel via which mobile users interacted with their bank was via mobile Internet access (11%) followed by SMS (8%) and mobile app (5.5%). Over the coming year the use of mobile web browsers to access banking is expected to remain the preferred channel rising to 14% while mobile app use will grow to 8.5% and SMS remain static.

"The task at hand for marketers in mobile banking is to migrate consumers from engaging in primarily informational services such as checking account balances to using transaction oriented services," said Jacqueline Rosales, EVP of business development and client service, Luth Research.

The implications of wider consumer adoption of mobile payment transactions for e-commerce are enormous. Consumers can engage in point-of-sale transactions, instant purchases, mobile-exclusive coupons and even mobile ticketing.

In fact, according to recently released findings by Juniper Research, mobile ticketing is about to take off in a big way across the pond in the U.K.. While just 2 billion are expected to be delivered this year, the research firm predicts this will rise to 15 billion in 2014.

"Although 15 billion sounds large, it is in fact it a small percentage of total tickets issued - there is plenty of scope for innovative solutions to penetrate this market," said Howard Wilcox, author of the Mobile Ticketing report.

Tags: m-commerce, mobile banking, mobile marketing, mobile phone, online banking