-
In merchants' eagerness to use mobile devices to attract new business, many are inadvertently creating new openings for credit and debit card fraud. And fraudsters have noticed.
March 9 -
Smartphones and social media are still relatively new frontiers for consumer banking, and they pose new risks.
February 22 -
Google's mobile wallet is getting a lot of attention, but from the wrong crowd — security experts.
February 13
While more consumers are using smartphones to pay bills and conduct other financial transactions, a good portion
The main fears consumers have about mobile payments is the security of their data and the possibility that
"Consumers' perception that mobile banking and
For the Fed's "
More than half of respondents said the reason they had not adopted mobile banking is because "their banking needs were met without the use of mobile banking." Forty-two percent of respondents cited security concerns as the reason they had not adopted mobile banking.
Eighty-seven percent of the U.S. population over age 18 has a mobile phone, and 44% of those are smartphones, the report says.
Some 21% of smartphone owners within the previous 12 months used their device for mobile banking, and 12% used it to make a payment, the report found. The Fed defined a mobile payment as purchases, bill payments, charitable donations or fund transfers to another person.
Among the respondents who used a smartphone to make a payment, 47% paid a bill online; 36% made an online purchase and 21% transferred funds to another person's bank, credit card or PayPal account.
Fewer than 10% of respondents used a smartphone for other types of mobile transactions, such as receiving a payment or texting to make a charitable donation, according to the report.
Younger consumers are more likely to make mobile payments with smartphones, the data suggest. Thirty-seven percent of respondents ages 18 to 29 said they had made a mobile payment compared with 22% of all respondents.
Among the underbanked, which the Fed defines as individuals who may have a bank account but use alternative financial services for check-cashing, 29% of respondents said that within the last 12 months they have used mobile banking services and 12% said they have made a mobile payment.
Women are also slightly more likely to use mobile payments, with females accounting for 55% of all mobile payments, the survey data says.
Income and education did not factor in different groups' use of mobile payments, according to the report.
The majority, or 66%, of respondents used a credit, debit or prepaid card to make a mobile payment, while 45% made payments directly from a bank account and 22% used Google Wallet, PayPal or iTunes. Eight percent routed a payment to their mobile phone bill.
Fewer than 7% of respondents used a smartphone to make more than five payments per month, the data says.
Although 58% of respondents used the Internet to price-compare before making purchases, only 12% of mobile-phone users said they had used a barcode-scanning application for price comparisons. Some 16% of respondents said they used their mobile phone to browse online-shopping reviews while in stores.
The Fed predicts that mobile banking will continue to grow, with one in three smartphone users adopting it by early 2013. "Similarly, a significant fraction of mobile phone users appears to be interested in using phones to make mobile payments," the report says.
