Mobile banking is not needed in Canada

It would be great for Canadian banking executives to visit South Africa. The FIFA world cup is being hosted in South Africa during June/July and two of the main sponsors are VISA and FNB. Both these companies have made major inroads into providing innovative and popular mobile banking solutions. FNB specifically, have shown that they can deploy mobile banking solutions currently being used by more than twice as many clients than use their Internet online banking. They achieved this by delivering mobile services specifically geared towards the mobile device. Their clients can do more with a mobile phone than they can do online.

It is my opinion that if Canadian banking executives were deploying mobile banking solutions in this way, their clients would be more positive towards mobile banking. In a recent survey conducted by Forrester research (Read here), Canadians indicated that they fail to see a compelling reason to use mobile banking. Forrester recommends that Canadian banks focus on smart phones as 90% of existing mobile banking users use smart phones. Maybe this is where the disconnect is. Should banks not develop solutions for clients that do not use mobile banking at this stage?