According to a new survey from the Federal Reserve, 89 percent of banks and credit unions already offer mobile banking services to their customers.
The report, the 2016 Mobile Financial Services Survey, also learned that 97 percent of financial institutions plan to offer mobile banking services by the end of this year.
Further, the survey, done by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, also revealed that more credit unions market mobile banking services to underbanked consumers than banks. Specifically, about one-third of credit unions market mobile banking services to underbanked consumers, with an additional 25 percent planning to market the services in the next two years. Only 22 percent of banks, however, currently market the services, with about the same amount planning to within two years.
The survey also found that 53 percent of credit unions offer mobile credit card account services compared to only 12 percent of banks.
Of the 706 institutions that participated in the survey, 186 were credit unions.
Among other findings, only 24 percent currently offer mobile payments, which allow the use of mobile phone to pay for goods. However, an additional 40 percent plan to offer mobile payments by 2018.
Finally, to protect consumers’ information, more than 80 percent said their mobile banking platform has inactivity timeouts, multi-factor authentication, and mobile alerts.