The use of mobile phones to access a bank account, credit card, or other financial account continued to increase in prevalence among adults in the United States last year, according to the Federal Reserve Board’s latest report on the use of mobile financial services.
Details provided to MMW show that as of December 2013, 33 percent of all mobile phone users and 51 percent of smartphone users had used mobile banking in the past 12 months.
“This is an increase from 28 percent in December 2012 for mobile phone users and 48 percent for smartphone users,” the Fed’s report summary reads. “The use of mobile phones to make payments at the point-of-sale has experienced substantial growth over the past several years, increasing threefold between the 2011 and 2012 surveys, and again between 2012 and 2013.”
In 2013, 17 percent of smartphone owners, representing 9 percent of the U.S. adult population, reported having used their phone to make a purchase at a retail store in the past 12 months.
Mobile phones are also increasingly used to help make decisions while shopping. Among smartphone owners, 44 percent had used their phone to compare prices while shopping and 42 percent had used their phones to browse product reviews in store. Over two-thirds of those who had used their phone to do price comparisons had changed where they made their purchase based on that information, the report shows.
The full report is available now from the Federal Reserve website.
