Europe: Tablet banking forecast to overtake mobile banking by 2018
Mobile banking in Europe is set to grow from 2013’s 42 million users to 99 million in 2018, forecasts Forrester. Within the same time period, tablet banking will grow from last year’s 19 million to a whopping 115 million.
“As customers start using their tablets and smartphones to do their banking, some will stop using their desktop and laptop PCs,” says Forrester analyst Stephen Walker. “We expect the number of Western European online banking users on PCs and tablets to grow slowly in the next five years and reach 163 million by 2018, masking a big underlying shift from PCs to tablets to access banks’ websites.”
The key drivers of the move from mobile to tablet banking are the increased availability of banking apps and few security concerns among tablet users compared with mobile users. In particular, Forrester says that consumers are unlikely to ever trust mobile banking as much as desktop or tablet banking because use of the latter two devices is usually restricted to within the home and are rarely likely to be lost or stolen and fall into the wrong hands.
The proportion of European tablet owners who use their device for banking is set to almost double from 2013’s 35% to 68% by 2018 with Sweden having the highest adoption (89%) and Italy the lowest (54%).