EXCLUSIVE— More and more consumers switch to mobile banking every day, as this quarter’s numbers prove: each of the top U.S. banks reported steady quarterly user growth, but JPMorgan Chase continues to outpace its competition.
The bank reported 30.9 million mobile users during its first quarter earnings results last week, a figure about 2% higher than last quarter’s 30.1 million.
While that growth rate is line with that of Wells Fargo’s (which also reported earnings last week) as well as Bank of America’s, which reported its earnings today, by year, Chase is growing much faster than its competitors. Take a look at the chart below:
Chase grew its mobile users by 13% YoY, growth that is only a couple of percentage points away from Bank of American’s 11% YoY rate: the bank reported 24.8 million users this quarter, compared to the 22.2 million it reported in the first quarter of 2017.
While BofA’s growth might be a step or two below Chase’s, the bank also reported a high increase in usage of the mobile channel — there were 1.38 billion total interactions on the app for the quarter, according to the bank’s quarterly statements, up 32% from the first quarter of last year.
Some of these interactions may be due to the increasing popularity of person-to-person transactions on the bank’s mobile app. Bank of America also reported strong growth in P2P payments, a given since the bank’s adoption of Zelle last year, reporting 28.6 million P2P transactions, up from 12.4 in the first quarter of 2017.
While BofA is at least keeping a few steps in sight of Chase, Wells Fargo’s mobile growth seems to have tapered: the bank reported 21.8 mobile active users for the quarter, actually growing at a faster quarterly rate than Chase (with 21.2 MAUs reported for the previous quarter). However, its YoY growth was under 8%.
Meanwhile Citibank, which just began to report its mobile user data a few quarters back, now has 10 million mobile users, up from the 9 million it reported last quarter.






