A new survey by the American Bankers Association and Morning Consult finds that a growing number of Americans are using mobile apps for banking.
This is the third year in a row, the survey said, that consumers are conducting their banking via mobile apps more often than any other method. Specifically, 45 percent of bank customers use apps on phones or other mobile devices as their top option for managing their bank account, while 27 percent use online banking via laptop or PC the most. Branch banking as the top option was only cited by 14 percent, while 6 percent chose ATMs, and 3 percent chose telephone calls.
“As mobile banking capabilities have evolved exponentially over the past decade thanks to bank investments in technology, we’ve seen many consumers become more comfortable embracing their phones and tablets to make everyday transactions,” Brooke Ybarra, ABA’s senior vice president of innovation strategy, said. “When the pandemic made in-person interactions more difficult, even more people leveraged the easy-to-use technology at their fingertips to deposit checks, pay bills or send money to friends, and they haven’t looked back. At the same time, in-person branch visits continue to play an important albeit less frequent role for many bank customers, particularly when it comes to more complex transactions.”
Looking at preferences among different generations, more than half of Generation Z, Millennials, and Generation X use mobile banking apps most often, while most Baby Boomers, 38 percent, use online banking most often. Further, 20 percent of Baby Boomers visit bank branches the most often, while only 6 percent of Gen Z prefer to visit a branch.
The findings in this ABA survey are consistent with a recent survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which also found that the use of mobile banking increased sharply between 2017 and 2021.