Mobile Banking Services to generate almost 90 billion text messages per year by 2015, up from 30 billion this year, according to Juniper Research

Hampshire, UK: 17th August 2010 -- New types of SMS mobile banking alerts will help to treble the volume of mobile banking messages to almost 90 billion p.a. by 2015, equating to one message every 2 days, per mobile banking user, according to a new in depth study by Juniper Research.   

Juniper’s in-depth interviews with mobile banking vendors and banks revealed that there is considerable scope for banks to offer new messaging based services on top of basic balance alerts. Banks are seeking to exploit these new process alerts to speed up customer communications during applications for products such as loans and mortgages.

Mobile Banking report author Howard Wilcox explained: "Our research found that messaging is a ‘win-win’ for banks. They can improve customer service significantly, whilst simultaneously eliminating the cost of servicing customer enquiries placed with call centres."

The Juniper report, however, identified that some banks are still to seize the potential of SMS services. The overall strategy behind alert messaging development is to encourage customers towards the self service world, with information delivery SMS which most people are familiar with.

Juniper Research also announced that the winner for the Future Mobile Award for Mobile Banking 2010 has been Wells Fargo, taking account of its multiple platform strategy and continued service innovation such as the recent near real-time warning of potentially fraudulent activity.

Further findings of the report included:
•         Over 80% of banks offer some form of mobile banking;
•         Western Europe will be the region with the highest penetration of users in 2015;
•         Transactional mobile banking usage will see similar growth rates to SMS.

The new Juniper report features the Juniper Mobile Banking Technology Strategies Survey of 77 banks across all regions which determined the popularity of SMS, mobile browser, smartphone apps including iPhone and Android and other apps such as Java.

The report provides forecasts of user take-up, user-level messaging traffic, user-level transaction volumes and gross transaction values for Mobile Banking Information Services, and Transactional Services.  

Whitepaper ‘Mobile Banking Goes Mainstream’ and further details of the study, 'Mobile Banking: Strategies, Applications and Markets 2010-2015' can be downloaded from www.juniperresearch.com.  Alternatively please contact John Levett at john.levett@juniperresearch.com, telephone +44(0)1256 830001.