In the space of banking and mobile, the perceptions of the customers are changing although the top reason for not using mobile for banking is security. Mobility devices that include phones and high-end devices such as iPads are increasingly enjoying the relationship with the customers as it’s a personal asset which the customer can carry wherever he goes. We can say that due to the ubiquitous nature, most mobile devices tend to be a mirror image of customer’s personality.

Due to these trends and adaption of mobile devices by customers, banks are accelerating their strategies to tap this emerging channel and usage. We have seen launch of mobile banking and slowly being extended to introduce more and more financial services such as payments & commerce, micro-finance, wealth and trading in this channel.

It’s a valid observation about “customers telling banks to go places where they haven’t been”.  Be it for banked segment, un-banked segment or under-banked segment or that niche segment who enjoy banking through agents the one device that is accessed and adapted is mobile. Whilst this presents a huge opportunity for the banks to bring their financial service offerings onto mobile, it is critical to have a slice & dice view of each of these segments so as to make the entire financial service offerings personalized to the demands of each of these segments. Knowing which customer prefers to trade on a mobile and which one just wants to use a mobile for paying their bills has a tremendous influence on how financial services are mobile enabled. The strategies to make mobile channel as one of the main stream channel and include in multichannel convergence cannot ignore the dimensions of growth, profitability and adaption of mobile financial services.

As the reliance on analytical capability is increasingly becoming a means for the banks to be “customer aware”, the very means has to be universal across all the delivery channels including mobile. Empowered with the information on usage pattern & purpose, and enabled with device agnostic access & experience, certain measures can determine the success of mobile financial services. These measures could be:

1. How much is the mobility driven financial services offering contributing to bank’s growth in terms of acquiring new customers, increasing business from existing customers and restricting customer attrition
2. What is the contribution towards profitability of the banks in terms of controlling cost, improving productivity
3. How satisfied is customer with their experience of mobility driven financial services.

In addition to the above, there could be region specific such as how much banks are able to provide financial services to un-banked and under-banked customer segment, thus contributing towards the country’s economy.

Isn’t it the mark of arrival, where we are noticing high movement of money on mobile is happening, increase in usage and acceptance, expectation to have services beyond traditional banking that mobile financial services takes the avatar of a legitimate channel.