Bank of America set an ambitious goal for digital sales last June: 50% over the next couple of years.
The bank remains far behind that target.
Last quarter, the bank recorded 27% of its consumer banking sales came from digital, according to its fourth quarter 2018 earnings, which were disclosed today. According to a presentation back in June from Dean Athanasia, co-head of consumer & small business at BofA, the goal for the bank remains 50% in digital sales.
BofA’s financial report for last quarter shows digital sales were up only by 3% to 27% compared to 24% in the same quarter last year, despite mobile channel usage — meaning the number of transactions — increased 16% over that period.
Meanwhile, mobile active users at the bank increased 9% to 26.4 million in 4Q18 from 24.2 million in the same quarter in the previous year. This 9% growth rate is still lower than at JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, both of which reported double-digit growth rates during the same period. JPMorgan Chase, the bank with the most digital and mobile users, saw an 11% growth rate during this same period, totaling 32.2 million active mobile users, while Citigroup recorded a rate 12%, despite fewer MAUs.
BofA’s active digital users (mobile and online) increased to 36.3 million during last quarter, up 4% year-over-year from 34.9 million.
Also Read: JPMorgan Chase Adds 2 Million Mobile Users While Closing 30 Branches in 4Q
Erica, BofA’s highly publicized virtual assistant, was reported to have 4.8 million users. The bank completed the roll-out of Erica in June.
The bank’s payments business seems to be expanding most significantly and could offer the bank a path to that 50% digital penetration rate. The bank reported an 11% YOY increase in total digital payments. Zelle, which is part of that payments business, showed an increase in transactions to 51.6 billion from 7 billion in the same quarter in 2017. The bank reported 4.9 million Zelle users, up 2.4 times since launching the service in June 2017.
For the fourth quarter of 2018, BofA reported a significant increase in net income to $7.3 billion compared to $2.4 billion in the same quarter the previous year.






