The unstoppable rise of the banking app

UK customers are continuing their rapid migration towards app-based banking as mobile banking logins outpace desktop logins and branch visits.

New research from the British Bankers Association (BBA) shows that while desktop logins to banking sites only increased by 2% between 2014 to 2015, app logins rose by 50%, topping 11 million logins a day in 2015. What does this mean for the industry?

With major players increasing the functionality of their apps (think Barclays Ping It, and the ‘pay your contact’s drive), and app-based challengers like Atom and Starling baking in modern, streamlined services to the core of their businesses, the focus on customer experience is clearly shifting to how banks can fit into people’s worlds rather than the other way round.

In fact, while overall customer interactions across channels are rising, physical branches will continue to decline in relevance. The BBA predicts that the number of branch visits will decline from 476 million in 2011 to 278 million in 2016 and just 185 million in 2021, with average visits to a branch per customer forecast to drop as low as 5.3 per year.

Perhaps the clearest indication that banks need to be directing efforts and budgets towards developing better apps and improving user experience is the BBA’s observation that the number of payments via app rose by 54% last year, while desktop payments rose by just 2%.

With such a clear, strong trend in how customers want to bank, we don’t think anyone can afford to be left behind in the big and fast march to mobile.