New Year, New Mobile App Trends

Mobile apps played a growing role in how members engaged with their credit unions in 2018 – a shift that’s made the mobile experience top-of-mind for many credit union leaders. Security was understandably a major part of that experience, especially in 2018, but how, why and where members used their apps was also important. That’s because for many members, the mobile experience now determines how they feel about their credit unions as a whole, which is one reason 2018 was all about the mobile app. Here are four of the year’s biggest stories about the mobile user experience for credit unions, plus a few predictions from the experts about what may come in 2019 for credit unions and their mobile apps.

1. Mobile Goes Mega Mainstream

By 2018, so many credit unions had rolled out mobile banking that the year was something of a line in the sand: Have a good mobile offering right now, or prepare to lose members. Mobile and online platforms became the most common way Americans accessed their bank accounts, though some still preferred branches. Checking balances was a favorite use of credit union mobile apps in 2018, but remote deposit capture also captured the attention of many credit union mobile users. New endorsement rules took effect, reflecting the growing digitization of check collection processes.

2. Mobile Users Start Hearing Voices

Biometric authentication was hot in 2018, though research showed that some of the growing love for voice-powered technology last year might be coming at the expense of smartphone use. Professional services company Accenture surveyed 21,000 consumers in 19 countries and found that 66% of people who owned a digital voice assistant used their smartphones less at home since installing the device. Javelin Strategy & Research also found that more than half of consumers would be willing to use Amazon’s digital voice assistant, Alexa, to check account balances and review recent transactions.

3. P2P Still TBD

Research last year suggested that more mobile use could mean more interchange income for credit unions. But members weren’t just paying retailers via mobile; they were sending money to each other, too. Person-to-person money transfer features went mainstream in 2018, with P2P payments growing by 250% and more than 11% of credit unions and banks making P2P available to their members. More credit unions faced tough decisions, however, about where P2P features fit into their mobile apps and how much turf to cede to Zelle, Venmo and players such as PayPal, where many consumers stored cash in 2018.

4. Not Everything Was Perfect

More than one study in 2018 found that most Americans who used digital banking services in the past 12 months were frustrated with the experience, and plenty were willing to switch financial institutions because of it. Speed was also a factor – almost 40% of millennials said they had dumped mobile banking activities because they took too long. The Mountain View, Calif.-based UserTesting found that difficulty getting to monthly statements on mobile was a major aggravation for people, and many were frustrated with difficult processes around setting up fraud alerts via mobile. “Poor experiences with these tasks hurt the participants’ perception of the entire app,” it warned.

What will 2019 bring?

Here are four things mobile experts said could happen in the credit union world this year when it comes to the mobile experience.

1. Personalization and customization features will mushroom. Declining branch visits means mobile engagement strategies and metrics will continue to scale the priority list for many credit unions in 2019. In turn, credit unions will likely invest more in finding ways to collect, analyze and apply the data they get about their mobile users and their behavior. One result of that in 2019 could be more personalized app experiences.

“I expect the mobile user experience to become more adaptive and more contextual,” Tim Daley, a director at Cornerstone Advisors in Scottsdale, Ariz., said. “My expectation is that the vendors, which … call it automated marketing capabilities, will extend that capability to the user experience. The menus will change based on my behavior. So if I go to bill pay more frequently than somebody else, then bill pay becomes more prominent because it’s part of my pattern of behavior, rather than some predefined list that the vendor created for me.”

2. Interchange income will rely even more on mobile activity. “Probably the biggest opportunity, I believe, in 2019 and in the immediate future is the concept around secure remote commerce,” PSCU Vice President of Product Management Jeremiah Lotz said.

Secure remote commerce will continue to evolve into a more common “buy” button or buy experience that works with all cards and mobile wallets, he said. The cards connected to that experience get the action, forming an even stronger tie between credit unions’ interchange income and mobile user experience in 2019.

“The credit unions then need to make sure that their card accounts, their spending accounts, are attractive to the consumer, so that you get good benefits or you get good protection,” Lotz said. “As a consumer, I know my credit union is the right card for me, so that’s what I put in that secure remote commerce wallet, if you will. Now I’ve got an easy buy experience because the merchants want it to be seamless, but my credit union’s account is so attractive to me that that’s the one that is always in there for me to use across that common buy experience.”

He added, “Consumers are going to start to see these easier experiences and then start making decisions based on the attractiveness of their account, if you will. I think the mobile piece is both experience as well as the account benefits themselves.”

3. Mobile card issuance will become a major onramp. More credit unions might double down on issuing new cards via mobile or reissuing lost cards via mobile in 2019. It can get new members up and running faster and soothe existing members who have lost their cards. But it can also ease both types of members into the credit union’s mobile wallet ecosystem, thereby increasing adoption, Lotz noted.

“We don’t want our credit unions to lose that top-of-wallet status, so a good mobile experience, ideally, will transition to the point where I can push you those card credentials via the mobile device at the moment you tell us that you’ve lost your card,” he said. “I can keep you as a transactor, and the way to do that is you use it as a mobile payment. And then you start to realize, ‘Oh that was a good experience. My credit union had my back. They were able to get me my access to my account right away and I can do it via mobile.’ Then you start to maybe adopt that as your primary experience in mobile payment.”