Vast Differences In Interest In Mobile Banking Services Across Countries: Survey

Sybase 365 has released the results of an online survey (PDF) into mobile banking across the Asia Pacific region which provides some interesting insight into what people want from mobile banking. The strongest result is also the least surprising: People in different countries are interested in different things when it comes to mobile banking. “The region is notable for its relatively wide country-specific differences in terms of the types of mobile banking services consumers want to access. For example, consumers in Taiwan are significantly less interested (23 percent) in using mobile phones for fund transfers than those in India (67 percent), Australia (75 percent) and Singapore (71 percent). Conversely, Taiwanese consumers are more interested in receiving information, such as interest rates (57 percent), and marketing / promotional messages (60 percent) than those in other regions”. The only stand-out service was getting account balance enquiries, which was the most popular service across all countries surveyed with interest rates ranging from 84-92 percent. The take-home message is that you can’t apply the same solution in different countries, there are local conditions which need to be taken into account.

The survey is an interesting read, but the absolute figures shouldn’t be taken too seriously — it covered 1,818 mobile users across Australia (255 interviews), China (276), India (311), Singapore (692) and Taiwan (284). A bigger problem is that it was an online survey, which as well as suggesting some self-selection in the respondents means that responses are skewed by internet penetration — for example, Indian respondents had remarkably high awareness (81 percent) and usage (49 percent) of mobile banking, which is more likely down to the relatively low penetration of desktop internet in the country so the respondents represented a wealthier, more tech-savvy sub-group.

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