JPMorgan Chase is winning the mobile game.
Bank of America held its second-quarter earnings call today, and was the last of the nation’s largest banks to do so. Mobile is of interest on bank earnings calls primarily as a cost-saving measure, as digital customers are less expensive to serve. For instance, Brian Moynihan, CEO at Bank of America, commented this morning that processing digital deposits costs 1/10th of manual deposits.
But mobile banking users also generate potentially valuable data, such as number of logins and user location, and this information is not available for nonmobile customers. Mobile banking can be considered a window into the future, and its value does not clearly appear on the balance sheet — yet.
JPMorgan Chase now has 24.8 million monthly active mobile users, while its nearest rival Bank of America announced today it has reached 20.2. Three years ago both stood around 13 million: Chase at 13.2 million, and BofA at 12.6 million.
Chase active mobile users increased 4.2% on the quarter. Bank of America’s mobile user base increased 3% over the same period, while Wells Fargo & Co.’s grew at 1.7%. Year over year, Chase mobile users grew 18%, while Bank of America’s grew 15% and Wells Fargo’s grew 12.5%.
Chase and BofA are also slowly lowering their branch counts. Chase now has 5,366 branches, down 2.3% year-over-year. Bank of America’s count is 4,681, down 2.5% from last year. Wells Fargo, which does not share an exact count, says its branches number “more than 6,000,” while the year-ago count was “about 6,200.”