Wells Fargo & Co. was rated top among retail banks in the overall quality of its mobile banking products and services in a new ranking.
The largest banks are pushing the envelope for mobile banking, trying to create a new channel that goes beyond what they do with PC online banking, according to Keynote Competitive Research, a Cambridge, Mass., unit of Keynote Systems Inc. The most undeveloped area for all banks, however, is text-message banking, the report says.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. ranked second. Keynote would not disclose the rankings of the other banks in the study it published Wednesday. The other banks ranked were Bank of America Corp., Capital One Financial Corp., Citigroup Inc., PNC Financial Services Group, and U.S. Bancorp.
The findings seem to contradict another financial index from Keynote, which ranks the mobile performance of the top 17 financial companies. Wells Fargo was ranked at ninth place.
"The mobile performance index is a measure of the technical performance of the mobile sites. The Scorecard examines how the sites work in terms of functionality [and] ease of use … and does not measure day-to-day technical performance," Chris Musto, general manager for Keynote Competitive Research, wrote in an email.
Wells Fargo, which has 6 million mobile banking customers, lets them access the bank via mobile web browser, a mobile app and text.
The rate of text access is higher than mobile banking usage currently, says Brian Pearce, vice president of retail mobile banking for Wells Fargo's Internet services group.
Text bankers send about 25 texts a month, he says, whereas those who have downloaded the mobile app make an average of nine or 10 visits each month.
"The key for us from the beginning has been about [consumer] choice and access," says Pearce.
