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At Bankrate we strive to help you make smarter financial decisions. While we adhere to strict editorial integrity, this post may contain references to products from our partners. Here's an explanation for how we make money. Bankrate logo The Bankrate promise
Founded in 1976, Bankrate has a long track record of helping people make smart financial choices. We’ve maintained this reputation for over four decades by demystifying the financial decision-making process and giving people confidence in which actions to take next. Bankrate follows a strict , so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. All of our content is authored by and edited by , who ensure everything we publish is objective, accurate and trustworthy. Our banking reporters and editors focus on the points consumers care about most — the best banks, latest rates, different types of accounts, money-saving tips and more — so you can feel confident as you’re managing your money. Bankrate logo Editorial integrity
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You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey. Bankrate follows a strict , so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers. We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money. Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service. Among smartphone users in the U.S., nearly two-thirds have at least one financial app. That’s according to a new survey by Bankrate that asked Americans about their use of finance-related apps, including those from traditional banks and fintech players. In the decade or so since smartphones were introduced, people have largely embraced using their devices to and other products. That’s particularly true for banking apps, where 70 percent of the respondents say they check their bank’s mobile app at least once a week; 16 percent say they check it every day. The benefits of engagement
Regular use of mobile banking apps has potentially significant implications for the financial health of users. Essentially, people now have the ability to and where it is going. For instance, watching your balance regularly is key to , says Greg McBride, CFA, Bankrate’s chief financial analyst. “Using mobile banking makes you more aware of your current financial state — what payments have cleared, whether your paycheck has been direct deposited, whether or not there is a hold on the check you just deposited,” McBride says. Users might also spot discrepancies or fraud faster on mobile than online. The ability to spot fraud quickly is just one of the elements that also makes mobile a more secure banking experience. Other elements include the use of biometrics, such as using your face or thumb to authenticate yourself, which are fundamentally stronger tools than using a password. The frequency with which people are using their banking apps also further demonstrates how intertwined devices have become in our lives, says Raja Bose, global retail banking consulting lead at consulting firm Genpact. Bose was an executive at Bank of America in the early years of mobile banking. “Back then, we described active mobile users as those who were active at least once in the last 30 days,” Bose says. “That underlines the point that frequency is being viewed in smaller windows of time.” Mobile banking 2 0
The frequency that people use mobile banking should also lead to cooler features. Banks first introduced mobile banking with straightforward features that mimicked what they offered online. But banks quickly learned that mobile is more dynamic than a desktop and have rolled out additional tools that wouldn’t be practical for the average user online. The best example of this is the ability to , which began gaining widespread adoption in 2013. With critical mass in mobile, banks are now looking at how they might evolve their apps from another way to interact with the bank to the cornerstone of your experience with your bank. “The overall share of banking customers adopting mobile has plateaued, and one of the reasons that is the case is that until the last two or three years mobile banking has been essentially mobile customer support,” Bose says. “But increasingly, the more progressive institutions are adding more functionality over and above what is offered on other channels.” In the future, your bank’s app could help you comparison shop, tell you when you’re blowing your budget or tell the teller who you are and likely why you’re visiting when you go into a branch. Michelle Moore, who oversees digital banking for Bank of America, sees the road to getting the people you see on their smartphones in line at the branch to use mobile banking a little differently. “People who don’t use mobile banking don’t understand all the capabilities,” Moore says. “So to us, the opportunity is education, education, education.” Bank of America has taken a note from Apple’s genius bar at its stores and retrained 4,500 of its branch employees to be digital ambassadors — essentially people there to answer all of your digital banking questions. Mobile use among the generations
It’s easy to think of mobile banking as primarily a millennial thing, but the adoption rates among the generations were fairly comparable: 64 percent of millennials and 59 percent for Gen Xers said they have at least one full-service banking app on their phone, though only 41 percent for respondents age 55 and up said the same. In the other categories, such as budgeting, investing or payments apps, the generational factors played more prevalently, however. For instance, 34 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 say they have at least one budgeting app on their phone. By contrast, only 15 percent of those 35 to 54 say they have at least one. What is also noteworthy is the adoption of investing apps like by people between the ages of 18 and 34. The survey found that 31 percent say they have at least one investing app on their phone. is expected to be transferred millennials as they inherit their parents’ and grandparents’ money. When that happens, where they will put it is a major point of interest for the traditional wealth managers. Will they stick with the robo-advisory firm that charged them low fees when all they could afford to invest was, say, $50 a month? Or will they go where their parents banked? This question is what is prompting several banks and wealth managers to come up with a robo-adviser solution. For instance, launched its in December. McBride says the actual transfer of wealth might be significantly less than expectations, given increased life spans, rising health care costs and a lack of retirement preparedness. Still, wealth managers are justifiably worried. “The money management and financial planning industry has broken out in a cold sweat about the potential assets that could go walking out the door as oftentimes the adult children have no loyalty to the adviser their parents used,” McBride says. “The Charles Schwab ‘‘ commercial touches on this.” SHARE: Robert Barba Related Articles