Mobile banking is not just for the wealthy — far from it. A report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation released today says just the opposite: the underbanked are greater users of mobile banking services than those with higher incomes. But the underbanked often rely too much on their mobile devices to meet their banking needs, according to the FDIC, and financial institutions should make extra efforts to help these customers meet their financial needs. The FDIC defines “the underbanked” as customers that use alternate financial services such as check-cashing in addition to traditional banking accounts, which the majority of underbanked customers have. In other words, traditional financial services are not completely meeting the need of underbanked customers. The FDIC numbers the underbanked at more than 24 million. A whopping 90.4% of underbanked consumers have access to mobile phones, and 71.1% of those have access to smartphones, according to the FDIC survey cited in today’s report. This compares to 86.8% of fully banked households with access to a mobile phone, and 67.8% of those households with access to a smartphone. The deep penetration of mobile phones makes the underbanked greater users of mobile banking than the fully banked. 42% of underbanked […]
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