Mobile banking is being used, but this is only the beginning

More than half of smartphone owners in the United States currently use this type of app and service.

According to recently released survey data from the Federal Reserve and an analysis conducted by Business Insider, about half of all smartphone owning American adults are now using mobile banking in some form, but at the same time, there is still a long way to go before it can be considered to be truly mainstream.

Among the general population, not just smartphone owners, the uses of these services is considerably lower.

The data showed that in 2013 the percentage of American smartphone owners who were using mobile banking services was about 51 percent. By the same time the next year, it had risen to only 52 percent. While it is growing, and while this does mean that more than half of all of these individuals users are also taking advantage of these services, it shows that the rate of growth is very slow and there is still a great deal of room for this type of usage to improve.

The fastest mobile banking penetration growth is occurring more quickly specifically among smartphone users.

The general population may not be seeing a rapid growth, but when taking a more focused look at the people who actually have the devices, there was a rate of increase of 6 percent, compared to the tiny 1 percent seen by the general population.

When looking at American adults who have bank accounts, regardless of whether or not they were smartphone owners, there was a 5 percent increase in the use of banking services over mobile devices. Across the entire American population, the penetration of banking over mobile devices reached 34 percent in 2014.

It was pointed out that it is very unlikely for feature phone owners to try to use mobile banking services will see much of an increase. The reason is that banks have not been releasing the types of apps that would be usable in feature phones, when the population is rapidly making the transition over to smartphones and the vast majority of device owners have that specific type of cell phone.