Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and other financial institutions, during their recent quarterly earnings calls, spent a lot of time talking about their technology and innovation initiatives. What follows are three tech trends that Bank Innovation found most interesting:

1. Mobile is Everything

In case it wasn’t clear already, mobile is increasingly the way customers want to interact with their bank. And banks can expect these mobile users to keep growing. During the third quarter, most major banks reported a rise in their mobile user numbers. In fact, with the exception of Wells Fargo, the five largest showed double-digit percent increases YOY. Citigroup showed the biggest percentage gain, a 13% YOY increase to 10.4 million users, although the bank has fewer mobile users compared to its peers. JPMorgan Chase, which consistently ranks first in this department, saw an 11% YOY increase in mobile users to 32.6 million. And Bank of America, which is the next in line, saw a 10% YOY increase to about 26 million.

And it’s not just banks seeing their mobile user populations grow. In fact, a new report from Malauzai showed that there has been a 9% uptick in the number of mobile banking apps deployed since last year. Fintechs like PayPal, PayPal-owned Venmo, as well as non-financial companies such as Uber, Starbucks, and Walmart, are all bringing in more mobile users than ever before.

And Speaking of Walmart, that brings us to trend #2.

2. Pay Attention to Retailers 

During their conference calls, both PayPal and Capital One talked about their new partnerships with retailer Walmart. Another interesting announcement was retailer H&M’s $20 million investment in fellow Swedish company Klarna, a fully-licensed bank.

“Pay attention to retailers,” said Dave DeFazio, a partner at StrategyCorps, a company that works with banks on enhancing their checking accounts, at the ABA conference in New York last week. “Banks and FIs are not really the competition. Retailers are actually the ones to watch in the payments world.”

Bank Innovation, predicts that this budding relationship between FIs and retailers will become a major trend for quarters to come.

3. To Have or Not to Have Virtual Assistants

Bank of America often cites Erica, its virtual assistant, as a catalyst for improving its digital numbers and boosting its customer service. Yet, BofA’s mobile app has consistently ranked low in custom-satisfaction surveys from J.D. Power and Malauzai.

And, yet, there is something to be said about the need for a banking app to provide a service that gives people the interactivity they’re getting accustomed to in their lives … Hello Alexa!

For the next quarters, Bank Innovation predicts that more banks will be looking at the virtual assistant space.

And some others might get even more creative with the concept, following the lead of Umpqua Bank’s Go-To service, which uses human agents to engage with customers and then taps into an AI system to answer simple queries about customer accounts.