With its consumer mobile banking upgrades well underway, Bank of America is turning its attention to businesses.
Small business clients can now apply for loans directly through all of BofA’s digital channels, which of course includes the bank’s mobile app. Applications for a “business advantage” term loan as well as for a “business advantage” credit line are now available to SMB clients on mobile.
It’s becoming key for small businesses to have digital tools and support, CEO Brian Moynihan said during the company’s earnings call yesterday.
“We’ve also rolled out small business capability to respond fast to the needs of the small businesses we serve across America,” said Moynihan. “We can’t emphasize enough of the positive impacts of all these investments especially in mobile and digital have made an improvement.”
BofA is bringing a few other products to the digital space aside from the loans themselves, including a “product tool” so SMBs can find the right loan, a calculator for monthly loan payments, and real-time access to the bank for any problems.
Like consumers, businesses are switching their banking to mobile: just over a million small business clients are “active users” of the mobile app, according to the release the bank put out today, representing a 14% increase from last year.
That’ s the same rate that BofA is growing its consumer mobile active users, which now reach 23 million. Consumer mobile banking has gotten a few upgrades from the bank this year, including access to the P2P service Zelle.
P2P has been the bank’s latest “push,” said Moynihan.
“This is an important payment stream that we are driving. It’s already sizable, but it still only accounts for 3% of the total payments in our consumer business this quarter,” said Moynihan. “It’s still an early adoption, but P2P customers sent $18 billion in payments for our platform of quarter two. This is up 20% percent year-over-year.”