In the EU5 countries of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, nearly two males accessed mobile banking for every one female during the three-month average ended March 2011, according to comScore data. Perhaps not surprisingly, smartphone users accounted for nearly 70% of mobile banking users, despite accounting for just 35% of the total mobile population.
Young Adults Leading Mobile Banking Users
Among age segments, 25-34-year-olds accounted for the highest percentage of mobile banking users (27.9%), and were also the highest-indexing segment (index of 161, with 100 representing the norm). Mobile users aged 55 and older showed the lowest relative usage of mobile banking with an index of 56.
In addition, Apple users exhibited the highest relative usage of mobile banking (index of 393), followed by users of Google Android (index of 245).
French Emerge as Most Avid Mobile Bankers
During the three-month period ending March 2011, France boasted the highest penetration of mobile bankers in EU5 with 10.3% of consumers accessing bank accounts through their mobile phones. Spain ranked a close second with 10.2% penetration. Germany, which comScore analysis indicates is the largest smartphone market in Europe, had the lowest penetration of mobile banking users with 6.8% accessing their bank accounts.
In the EU5 region, 8.5% of mobile subscribers overall accessed mobile banking, while 5.1% accessed credit cards and 5.2% accessed electronic payments via their mobile device.
UK mobile phone owners were the most conservative with regards to accessing credit card accounts and only 3.9% of the UK mobile population used the service in March 2011. On the other hand, mobile banking reached 8.6% of the total UK mobile market, making it the third largest market for mobile banking in Europe.
UK Leads Most Mobile Activities
Despite not showing leadership in mobile banking activity, UK mobile users had the highest rates of performing many mobile activities during the three-month period ending March 2011. For example, the UK had the highest rates of sending text messages (90% compared to 82.4% EU5 average), using downloaded applications (39.3% compared to 30.3% EU5 average), using a browser (42.7% compared to 31% EU5 average), accessing social networking sites/blogs (30.2% compared to 19.8% EU5 average), accessing news (22% compared to 14.9% EU5 average), playing games (32.2% compared to 25.6% EU5 average), and using a smartphone (39.2% compared to 34.5% EU5 average).
In fact, the only mobile activity tracked by comScore where the UK did not lead was listening to music, where Spain led with 32.3% participation, compared to 25.6% EU5 average and 24.4% UK participation.
US Mobile Fin Service Use Grows
In Q4 2010, 29.8 million Americans accessed financial services accounts (bank, credit card, or brokerage) via their mobile device, an increase of 54% from 19.3 million in Q4 2009, according to comScore MobiLens data. In addition, 18.6 million users accessed their financial accounts via mobile browser in Q4 2010, up 58% from 11.8 million the previous year.
