ABI Research: Mobile Financial Services Will See a Wide Adoption

ABI Research has recently published another mobile financial services report, which also states that there is a great chance that these services will attract a lot of users in the future and that they will most likely become “the next big thing” on the mobile phone market.

Mark Beccue, the senior analyst of the research company, stated that these services were expected to see greater traction than mobile TV and premium mobile content. “They have the broadest demographic appeal: almost anybody over the age of 18 is a potential user,” he said.

The financial services offered by companies via mobile devices are of three kinds: mobile banking, mobile domestic person-to-person payments as well as international person-to-person payments. According to the research firm, banks are not the only institutions expected to promote mobile financial services in the coming years, but MNOs, money transfer organizations, bank software vendors and mobile application service providers could also join the party.

Mobile banking services are expected to see the greatest adoption rate in the industrialized world, while mobile domestic and international person-to-person payments should see better adoption in less mature regions, as they could provide ways of enabling commerce or extending services to rural regions, or even help people get out of poverty.

At the same time, ABI Research states that the person-to-person payment service is largely recession-proof because it is more about people managing their money rather than spending it. According to the firm, Bank of America has been a leader in the mobile banking area, as it launched the service back in May 2007 and currently has around 1.5 million subscribers.

The report of ABI Research is entitled “Mobile Banking and Funds Transfer” and can be found on the firm's website.