A new report by market analyst Datamonitor has found that mobile phone banking in the UK is lagging behind services being provided in other parts of the world. It suggested that this is having a negative impact on the reputation of e-banking, meaning that consumers do not really value it.
The research found that, although countries in Africa and Asia, and also Russia and India, have innovative mobile phone banking technology, consumers in the UK were being offered only basic text-based functions.
Advanced mobile banking services, such as applications that allow people to transfer money to third parties without needing to know their bank account details, are just not available, leaving UK consumers able to only do things like check their balances. This has resulted in only 16 per cent of consumers valuing the technology, compared with 60 per cent in Brazil, said the report.
Datamonitor found that mobile banking was more advanced in a lot of developing countries due to a lack of infrastructure for consumers to access their accounts through the internet, or even be able to travel to branches, resulting in mobile phones often being the easiest way to communicate with the bank.
Daoud Fakhri, an analyst at Datamonitor, commented "Although UK banks will start to catch up with other markets in the coming years, they will need to ensure that they're able to get the basics right and provide seamless day-to-day services before consumers can be convinced that it is an important feature."






