Firethorn, a mobile financial solutions provider based in Atlanta, conducted a study showed that U.S. consumers are ready to dive further into mobile financial services, beyond m-banking.
The results of the survey illustrate that consumers are ready for the mobile wallet. Keeping in mind that the findings are from a mobile financial services vendor, the study's results are still telling. Overall, claimed Firethorn, the results show that people in the U.S. are starting to use their phones for much more than making calls. One significant finding was that the majority of consumers polled (59 percent) said they would like to use their phones to pay for items at the point of sale. Additionally, over three quarters (76 percent) said they wanted an alternative to carrying a wallet stuffed with cash, cards and coupons.
Participants also desired to use their mobile phones as a shopping assistant for price comparisons (64 percent), access to credit card details, balances and transactions (61 percent), and organizing and tracking their gift card, loyalty and reward accounts (59 percent).
Furthermore, 85 percent said they like to track their finances on a daily basis that is probably of most importance to banks, —an indication that people would likely respond favorably to personal financial management functionality on their phones. Nearly two thirds (62 percent) of consumers say that they are likely to download and use a free account management application that would allow them to organize and track their financial and shopping account information. And it was through their banks that almost half of the participants heard about mobile banking.
Firethorn conducted the research online among 1,350 adults age 18 to 64 who own a mobile phone and have a financial instrument.