Category: Apps

UK consumers prefer mobile banking to human bank tellers

Recent data released by the Halifax Bank of Scotland revealed that this preference is maintained in-branch.

The most recent indication that mobile banking is becoming increasingly popular and that the traditional form of banking by lining up and speaking to a human teller is on its way out, has now been released in the form of some interesting data from Halifax Bank of Scotland.

What it showed is that customers would rather use their smartphones or an ATM than speak to staff.

In fact, that preference is strong enough that customers would still rather use mobile banking or an automated machine, even when they’re in a bank branch. The vast majority of interactions that customers have with their banks are over devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and automated teller machines. In the branches, themselves, over half of the visits will include the use of one of the self service machines in order to pay using checks or cash. These are frequently chosen over the opportunity to speak with the human cashiers and other staff members.

Usually, mobile banking and other automated services are selected unless more detailed assistance is needed.

Mobile Banking Preferred by ConsumersIt appears that consumers would prefer to use devices whenever possible, and that staff members are consulted only when complex products (such as mortgages, for example) or detailed financial advice is required.

Online accounts are accessed by mobile devices and laptops far more frequently than branch visits are made. In fact, the data from Halifax showed that it had experienced 69 million interactions with consumers throughout the month of June, at a daily average of 2.3 million. This is an increase of 47 percent over the same month, the year before. This indicates that not only are people choosing to access their accounts online, but they’re accessing them more frequently than ever4 before.

Among those interactions, a massive 57.2 percent were made over the mobile banking app, as consumers increasingly use their smartphones and tablets for making payments and checking balances while they’re on the go. Another 29.4 percent used desktops and laptop computers to do the same thing. Only a tiny 10.3 percent of the interactions were actually branch visits and an even smaller 3 percent contacted their bank by phone.

YouTube recreates its experience over mobile devices

The new smartphone app will be designed to make it simpler for users to create and find videos.

YouTube is redesigning the experience that it provides to users of mobile devices, since over half of the views to their video platform are now coming from smartphones and tablets.

This move was first revealed by Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, in California at VidCon.

According to the statistics that are being generated by YouTube, itself, there are over one billion people around the world who use that platform. Over half of those views are being generated through mobile devices. Moreover, the revenue generated over smartphones and tablets for the platform is increasing by over 100 percent per year. In the new mobile app, there will be an additional three tabs added in order to make it simpler both to find videos and to create them.

The three new YouTube tabs for mobile devices will be: Home, Subscriptions, and Account.

Mobile Devices - YouTubeThe new Home tab will provide the user with an intelligent video list that has been selected for that individual based on his or her viewing history. The Subscriptions tab will provide a list of the most recent videos from the channels to which he or she has opted to subscribe. There will also be a notification option that can be turned on so that the user can receive a notification when one of those channels has released a new video. The Account tab will provide the user with a list of every video that they have uploaded, as well as their watch history.

The mobile app will make it possible for users to record their own videos and to upload them. From the application, they will be able to trim them, add music and filters, and upload them.

The new mobile app is already available for Android users and on the mobile web. That said, users of iOS mobile devices will still need to wait a little longer. It is on the way but at the time of the writing of this article, it had not been released at the Apple Store. According to project managers Omri Amarilio and Omri Amarilio, users can expect to see even more features being added to the application and the mobile web experience before 2015 is through.