New types of SMS mobile banking alerts will help to treble the volume of mobile banking messages to almost 90 billion a year by 2015, equating to one message every two days, per mobile banking user.

So says a new in-depth global study by Juniper Research, whose interviews with mobile banking vendors and banks reveal there is considerable scope for banks to offer new messaging based services on top of basic balance alerts. Banks are seeking to exploit these new process alerts to speed up customer communications during applications for products such as loans and mortgages. 

Mobile Banking report author, Howard Wilcox, explained: "Our research found that messaging is a ‘win-win’ for banks. They can improve customer service significantly, while simultaneously eliminating the cost of servicing customer enquiries placed with call centres." 

However, the report identified that some banks are still to seize the potential of SMS services. The overall strategy behind alert messaging development is to encourage customers towards the self service world, with information delivery SMS which most people are familiar with.

Further findings of the report included:

• More than 80 per cent of banks offer some form of mobile banking
•  Western Europe will be the region with the highest penetration of users in 2015
• Transactional mobile banking usage will see similar growth rates to SMS

The report features the Juniper Mobile Banking Technology Strategies Survey of 77 banks across all regions, determining the popularity of SMS, mobile browser, smartphone apps including iPhone and Android and other apps such as Java.

The whitepaper, ‘Mobile Banking Goes Mainstream’ and further details of the study can be downloaded from: www.juniperresearch.com