More than 60% of U.S. consumers own a tablet, nearly the same percentage as those who own a desktop computer. Despite this strong hardware adoption, early financial institution support, and broad use of mobile banking among tablet owners, the tablet as a banking channel tool has failed to live up to its early promise.
A new study from JAVELIN, Tablet’s Shifting Role in Mobile Banking, notes
since the iPad’s introduction in 2010, tablet adoption has enjoyed meteoric growth and appears to have every reason to succeed as a banking platform. So why has innovation and development slowed to a crawl for tablet-specific functionality, leaving the devices at the bottom of consumers’ lists when accessing their accounts?
Compared with other popular digital banking devices (smartphone, laptop, and desktop), the tablet is used least by mobile bankers on a weekly basis. The percentage of consumers who access mobile banking weekly on their smartphone is more than twice as high as those who turn to their tablets each week (31% vs. 15%).
Tablets, however, provide a perfect platform for product marketing and new account opening. Institutions must turn to these forgotten devices to better meet the needs of new-to-bank mobile-first customers.
The JAVELIN study says tablet banking usage has stagnated in the absence of any must-have features, while smartphone banking innovations such as remote deposit capture and biometric logins have made the smartphone consumers’ go-to device for mobile account access.
The report that JAVELIN released, Tablet’s Shifting Role in Mobile Banking, also highlights the high percentage of tablet bankers who access their accounts through a browser, and explores how institutions can drive deeper customer engagement by building better bridges between online and mobile banking, and between the bank’s public and secure sites.
For a complete archive of more than 70,000 articles published since 1995 search the CardFlash.com library.
