Mobile Banking, Mobile Payments and Digital Transformations

I read with interest (no pun intended) an article today titled, The Future of Mobile Payments and Banking, from Cognizant's banking and financial services expert Tony Virdi.  In the article he identifies a number of mobile and digital trends he is seeing in 2013 including:

• Changing consumers behaviors and demands are driving transformation within the banking and payment processing industries
• The volume of digital (mobile and Internet) banking transactions is growing exponentially
• The role of the bank as a physical venue or outlet has changed as most transactions are moving online or mobile
• Digital bankers [I read mobile/Internet bankers] are rapidly becoming the new power base
• Retail banks are increasingly dedicating discretionary budgets to investments in digital solutions
• Banks can increase their wallet share and income by offering more and better digital services
• Banks are increasingly focused on m-commerce as a means of both providing better customer service as well as enhancing their top lines
• Smartphones are now payment acceptance device (via Square, PayPal, etc), which reduce the time to bring on board new merchants and also reduces the cost of transaction
• Customers expect to instantly personalize banking products (via mobile apps and the Internet)
• More UK online shoppers are using debit cards than credit cards in 2013 according to the UK Cards Association.  That is a significant industry change that banks need to ponder.
• New mobile payment services will enable instant, secure payments from bank accounts via apps, bridging ecommerce, mCommerce and extending into payments made directly in a retail environment
• New UK service in 2014 to enable people to send money via smartphone to anyone holding a bank account in one of eight participating banks. Payments will be routed via their mobile number linked to their sort code and account number in a database. 
• Smartphones used as payment acceptance devices provide an entirely new platform for loyalty-based programs to be developed and implemented

For more on digital transformations in the banking industry read http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/2013/07/banks-mobile-technologies-and-smac-part.html.


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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.