Why do we use our mobile banking app?
That’s easy: to transfer money, view our transactions, deposit a check — but which features don’t we use on our mobile banking apps?
That has been more of a mystery, but last week the mobile (and wearable) software designers at Malauzai finally pulled back the curtain on the least used features in mobile banking. Here are the five least used features last month, with the actual number of times each was used on Malauzai’s software, which is installed at 340 banks for more than 350,000 active users.
- Terms of Use – 35
- Retake Picture Pay Photo – 62
- Main Marketing Message – 4,322
- Branch Locator – 8,960
- Contact Us – 11,583
For comparison, the most popular feature, Internal Transfer, was used more than 300,000 times. (View Balance must not count as a separate feature.)
Terms of Use – Don’t tell compliance, Malauzai joked in its email distributing the data.
Picture Pay is Malauzai’s term for paying bills by taking pictures of them. The $2-billion City Bank in Texas was the first bank in the country to introduce photo bill pay, using Malauzai software. The number 62 is extremely low, as failure in remote deposit capture of checks runs high — so high no one will say what the actual number is. But perhaps Retake Picture Pay Photo is a separate feature that may not be indicative of the actual failure rate.
Main Marketing Message — With just 4,322 clicks, it appears the mobile advertising code has not yet been cracked. But Malauzai pointed out that mobile users are a captive audience, and a click from within the app is a highly valuable click.
Branch Locator – The lack of interest follows established trends. Interestingly, the option to find an ATM is not one of the Top Five features.
Contact Us – This one is likely good news, meaning customers do not frequently feel the need to message the bank from within the app requesting help or registering complaints. This points to mobile’s effective use as a cost-saver.
For its part, Malauzai notes that even little-used features must be offered going forward. Users expect them, and their lack would be noticed. Banks are used to this. Even as behavior shifts from one channel to another, customers (and regulators) still expect banks to continue offering access via the most channels possible. This prevents some banks from closing underperforming branches — but as one banker commented to Bank Innovation recently, “When we stopped offering Sunday hours at our branches, we didn’t get a single complaint — not one.”
Get more innovation intelligence at Bank Innovation Israel on Nov. 10-11 in Tel Aviv. Click here for details.