Texans Take to Mobile Banking, Survey Finds

Mobile banking is burgeoning in the Lone Star State.

Thirty-three percent of Texans say they use mobile banking applications on a smartphone or tablet, up from 20% who said they used such applications in 2011, according to a survey released Thursday by SWACHA, a nonprofit payments association that serves financial institutions in Texas, New Mexico and Louisiana.

Forty-six percent of people surveyed say they deposit checks via their smartphones, up from 16% in 2011. Another 25% say they envision themselves using their mobile device to deposit checks, up from 16% who imagined themselves depositing checks remotely in 2011.

The survey shows “significant trends in this rapidly changing environment that we will continue to monitor, such as remote deposit capture, which is not only changing the way people interact with technology, but it's also changing the way people interact with their banks, and it's an adjustment the industry is welcoming,” Dennis Simmons, SWACHA's chief executive, said in a press release.

Mobile banking in Texas tracks trends nationally, where 48% of smartphone users have banked with their device in the past year, compared with 42% a year earlier, the Federal Reserve found in a survey published in April. Twenty-one percent of mobile bank customers have used their phone to deposit a check, double the occurrence as in 2011, according to the Fed.

Banks nationwide introduced new apps at a rapid pace and customers adopted them quickly during the month of April, American Banker's Mobile Banking Intensity Index finds.

In Texas, 45% of people say they use a mobile banking application at least once a week, while 20% say they bank via their smartphone daily, according to SWACHA. Texans also are using their smartphones to check bank account balances (86%) and transfer money between accounts (35%). Paying bills via a smartphone rose among state residents to 41% from 36% in 2011, while 35% of Texans say they have used a smartphone to send money to someone else, up from 26% two years ago.

Nationally, 87% of consumers who bank via their smartphone or tablet use mobile banking to check account balances or recent transactions, according to the Fed.

The survey of 601 Texas residents was conducted in April on SWACHA's behalf by Decision Analyst, a market research firm.

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