Several leading banking vendors are working on products that will allow financial institutions to push more and better communications to their clients, Bank Innovation has learned.

Two banking vendors — Varolii Corp. and Intuit Financial Services — told Bank Innovation that they are working on so-called push technology products.

The drive is coming as smartphone penetration continues to amp up among US consumers. Just yesterday, Dan Schulman, group president, enterprise growth, at American Express, said the card company expects “most” consumers to have smartphones within four to six years, considering that the “typical” consumer changes phones every 18 to 24 months, according to research Amex has reviewed.

And push notifications through banking customers’ mobile apps might be the next communication frontier for FIs in years to come.

Part of the issue of creating deeper engagement is consumer app neglect. Brian Moore, industry practice manager at Varolii, says many apps just sit on a consumers’ smartphone screen, unused. To reinvigorate banking app usage, he believes push notifications could be an effective strategy to “drive more usage and value from the smartphone.”

It happens to be that the technology already exists within smartphones, and would require less programming effort than other mobile initiatives by FIs that already boast banking apps.

“It’s a way to enhance the customer experience and lower [communication] costs,” he says. “Consumers [might] be more inclined to be more active with institution.”

The push notification message itself should center on relevant, and perhaps pressing financial situations, such as large wire transfers. The push could also encompass a bill payment reminder or a fraud notification, Moore suggests.

Generally, the push notification channel is not yet widely used within financial services, Moore says, adding that investments might have already been made, but only exist under the radar to date.

This week, Varolii released a study on consumer banking preference discussion and discovered that only 4% of retail banking executives say they use smartphone apps as a top communications method. Ahem. That’s problematic for all the mobile-is-the-future-of-banking hoopla.

Intuit Financial Services, for one, is potentially working on rolling out such functionality into its mobile products in the next 12 months. The fintech vendor views the technology as a different way to connect with consumers’ mobile devices while also providing them important information quickly.

“You don’t need a phone number,” Deepti Sahi, senior product management at Intuit, tells Bank Innovation. Beyond that perk, using push technology will avoid draining any data plan restrictions consumers may have, Sahi adds. Plus, when it comes to tablets — a device that Intuit released an app for just this week — the ability to send text messages is limited. Therefore, push notifications could possibly fill in the instant message void on the devices, Sahi says.

Ultimately, though, FIs have a long ways to go in satisfying consumers’ communications needs.

“FIs have room to improve alignments to customer preferences,” Moore says. “The challenges and limitations of current banking platform need to be addressed.”