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2013 Global Mobile Banking Functionality
Rankings
by Peter Wannemacher and myriam da Costa, april 25, 2013
For: eBusiness &
Channel strategy
Professionals
key TakeaWays
Forrester evaluated The Mobile Banking services of 15 Banks
Worldwide
Forrester evaluated the mobile banking offerings of 15 banks in Australia, Canada,
France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US. Our evaluation criteria
cover account information, transaction functionality, usability, and support for
different mobile platforms.
every Bank does some Things Well, But There’s plenty of Room For
improvement
Although Chase stood out for having the best mobile banking service overall, we
found best-in-class examples from almost all of the firms we assessed. We also
found important opportunities for improvement at every bank, as you would
expect for a relatively new touchpoint.
Banks Need To Make More use of Mobile Context
The most obvious missed opportunity among the 15 banks we reviewed is that few
are making effective use of context to make information more relevant to customers.
Sales is another big missed opportunity: Some banks aren’t even trying to cross-sell
products and services through mobile, and none of the 15 does it effectively.

© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available
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For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals
Why Read This Report
We used our Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark methodology to evaluate the retail mobile banking
offerings of 15 retail banks in in North America, Western Europe, and Australia across more than 50
criteria. This report, which forms part of our mobile banking strategy playbook, is intended to help
eBusiness and channel strategy professionals to benchmark their own mobile banking offerings. You can
use the data and practices in this report to understand the current state of mobile banking functionality,
get a clear view of the mobile features the top banks offer to retail customers, and plan improvements to
your own mobile banking services.
Table Of Contents
Forrester’s Mobile Banking Functionality
Benchmark Methodology
Ranking Banks’ Mobile Efforts: Chase Leads
With Robust Functionality
Mobile Banking Functionality Best Practices
Of Banks Worldwide
recommendations
Mobile Banking Is Meeting Expectations;
Now Try To Exceed Them
Supplemental Material
Notes & Resources
Forrester used its Mobile Banking
Functionality Benchmark methodology to
review the mobile banking services offered
by 15 banks worldwide: Bank of America,
Barclays, Chase, Citibank, Commonwealth
Bank of Australia, HSBC, la Caixa, Lloyds
TSB, NatWest, Deutsche Postbank,
Rabobank, Royal Bank of Canada, Société
Générale, TD Canada Trust, and Wells Fargo.
Related Research Documents
2013 US Mobile Banking Functionality
Rankings
April 25, 2013
2013 UK Mobile Banking Functionality
Rankings
April 25, 2013
Best Practices In Mobile Banking
January 28, 2013
2013 Global Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings
Benchmarks: The Mobile Banking Strategy Playbook
by Peter Wannemacher and Myriam Da Costa
with Benjamin Ensor, Stephen Walker, and Douglas Roberge
2
3
6
24
25
April 25, 2013

2013 Global Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings 2
© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 25, 2013
Forrester’s Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark Methodology
To help eBusiness and channel strategy professionals benchmark their mobile efforts, identify
critical mobile features, and plan for the future, we used our Mobile Banking Functionality
Benchmark methodology to evaluate the mobile banking services of 15 large retail banks in
eight countries: Bank of America, Barclays in the UK, Chase in the US, Citibank in the US,
Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HSBC in the UK, la Caixa in Spain, Lloyds TSB in the UK,
NatWest in the UK, Postbank in Germany, Rabobank in the Netherlands, Royal Bank of Canada
(RBC), Société Générale in France, TD Canada Trust, and Wells Fargo in the US.1
This methodology
has three steps:
■ Define a user scenario. We used Forrester’s Consumer Technographics® survey data to develop
a user persona based on a profile of US and European mobile banking users (see Figure 1). To
test the mobile functionality and usability, we identified four common banking goals that we
attempted to execute on each bank’s main iPhone app.2
The goals reflect the range of activities
that users have come to expect from mobile banking, including consolidated balance viewing,
money movement, bill payment, and mobile alerts.3
■ Score the banks’ mobile banking services across a variety of categories and criteria. We use
more than 50 individual criteria in our Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark methodology.
Each criterion has a potential score ranging from -2 to +2. These scores measure how well each
feature meets users’ needs and helps users achieve their goals. The criteria are divided into eight
categories: range of touchpoints, enrollment and login, account information, transactional
functionality, service features, cross-channel guidance, sales and acquisition, and usability.4
■ Rank the firms. We weight each criterion to ensure that — in general — the most important
mobile features have the largest impact on a firm’s overall score.5
The combination of weightings
and scores for the criteria generates an overall score for each category and for the bank’s mobile
offering as a whole. The final scores are based on a 100-point scale — a score of 50 or higher
meets our minimum standards.

Figure 1 Mobile Banker User Description And Goals
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.75591
User goals
• Find and view a recent transaction
• Send $20 to his niece for her birthday
• Add a payee for mobile bill pay
• Find the branch or ATM closest to him
User description
A 35-year-old married man with one daughter and a high-paying job as a salesman in the
pharmaceutical industry travels regularly for work. He recently bought an iPhone and is
quickly learning to use it to manage his financial accounts. He has been comfortable
using remote banking for years and is eager to shift many banking activities — including
paying bills and moving money — to his smartphone.
Ranking Banks’ Mobile efforts: chase Leads With Robust Functionality
In this, our inaugural Global Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark ranking, the 15 banks
achieved an average score of 56 out of 100 (see Figure 2). Individual category scores reveal the
differences seen in the banks’ mobile banking offerings (see Figure 3). While most of the banks are
meeting mobile banking users’ basic needs, there’s considerable room for improvement for some
banks. Specifically, we found that:
■ Chase takes the top spot. With a score of 71 out of 100, Chase received the highest overall score
among the 15 banks we evaluated. The firm scored an impressive 81 out of 100 in our range
of touchpoints category, but the break from the pack came in the transactional functionality
category, where Chase earned 86 out of 100. The bank offers useful contextual options for
mobile banking users, such as the ability to add a payee for person-to-person (P2P) payments by
importing the customer’s contacts from his or her phone. The bank also lets users either cancel
or edit pending transactions like bill payments or transfers.
■ La Caixa is the leader in Europe. With a score of 67, la Caixa received the highest score
among the eight European banks we assessed. The bank scored an impressive 88 out of 100
in our range-of-touchpoints category and 83 out of 100 in account information and money
management. La Caixa has native mobile and tablet apps across four operating systems:
Android, BlackBerry OS, iOS, and Windows Phone. Customers can make transfers, pay
bills, and apply for products via the bank’s tablet app. Customers can search their transaction
histories to up to one year ago and search by transaction amount range.

■ The other North American banks mostly did well. Although they haven’t quite matched the
achievements of Chase, the digital banking teams at Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank,
and RBC have also built impressive mobile banking services that offer their customers extensive
functionality on a wide range of devices.
■ The UK’s banks still lag behind. Strikingly, the UK’s banks — which were slow to take mobile
banking seriously and late to launch mobile banking services for smartphones — have not yet
caught up from their late start.6
The mobile banking services from the UK’s banks are notably
less advanced than those offered by banks in North America and elsewhere in Europe. The best
of the UK’s banks, NatWest, scored slightly above the average for the 15 banks overall.

Figure 2 2013 Global Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings
Below minimum
standards
(25 to 49)
Significantly
below minimum
standards
(0 to 24)
Meets/exceeds
minimum
standards
(50 to 74)
Significantly
above minimum
standards
(75 to 100)
Scoring criteria scale:
*Please note that we reviewed the main mobile banking app for all banks. These banks also offer other apps,
notably mobile payment apps, that we did not include in this benchmark.
56Average
25HSBC
52Commonwealth Bank
of Australia*
46TD Canada Trust
54Barclays*
52Lloyds TSB
56Société Générale
57NatWest
58Deutsche Postbank
59Rabobank*
61Citi (US)
61Royal Bank of Canada
63Wells Fargo
63Bank of America
67la Caixa*
71Chase

Figure 3 Average Category Scores Across The Mobile Bank App Benchmarked
Usability
Range
of
touchpointsEnrollm
ent
and
login
Accountinfo
and
m
oney
m
anagem
ent
Transactional
features
Services
features
Salesand
acquisition
Cross-
channel
Chase 86 58 73 86 55 73 0 75
la Caixa 88 31 83 59 48 65 26 85
Bank of America 83 58 74 56 58 58 8 70
Wells Fargo 75 40 73 73 49 61 0 70
Royal Bank of
Canada
64 75 68 65 34 73 11 85
Rabobank 75 91 75 69 26 23 0 80
Citi (US) 84 43 73 81 29 56 0 55
Deutsche
Postbank 78 40 69 50 26 64 14 95
NatWest 71 43 76 49 29 60 0 90
Société Générale 68 58 71 33 45 61 0 95
Lloyds TSB 53 83 60 51 34 60 26 55
Barclays 73 65 69 36 26 60 0 85
TD Canada Trust 53 25 60 53 11 69 0 60
Commonwealth
Bank of Australia
73 40 45 44 18 76 33 85
HSBC 49 56 34 0 18 4 0 45
Average 71 54 67 54 34 57 8 75
Mobile Banking functionality Best Practices Of Banks worldwide
Our methodology not only provides a benchmark for the current state of mobile banking
functionality; it also uncovers important practices from the banks we assessed. We found best-in-
class examples from almost all of the firms we assessed. These range from enabling customers to
manage alerts from within the mobile app to making it easy to send money to people in a customer’s
mobile phone address book.

Leading Banks Support A Wide Range Of Mobile Touchpoints
Before banks can fully serve customers through mobile touchpoints, they have to ensure that
customers can interact with them via mobile. Today banks have to develop mobile banking services for
many different smartphone and tablet platforms. La Caixa, Chase, Bank of America, and Rabobank
stand out in this category. We reviewed banks’ offerings across four mobile delivery methods:
■ Two-way SMS banking. Hard as it may be to believe, not everyone has a smartphone — yet. For
non-smartphone users, SMS text banking offers the benefits of immediate access to their bank
accounts without the barriers of other touchpoints. What’s more, buying a smartphone or tablet
doesn’t quell the desire for SMS interactions: US online smartphone owners are actually more
likely to send and receive SMS at least daily.7
Most of the banks offer some type of two-way SMS
banking, but only La Caixa lets users initiate transfers or pay credit card bills by sending an SMS
to the bank.8
■ Dedicated mobile website(s). With firms in other industries delivering useful mobile websites,
customers will expect the same from their banks. Most banks have built mobile-optimized
websites in order to meet this demand. Indeed, some banks initially intended their mobile
websites, rather than mobile apps, to be their customers’ primary way of doing mobile banking.
Some banks are using their mobile websites to promote services and offer product information:
For example, TD Canada Trust shows current rates for various products on its mobile site (see
Figure 4).
■ Downloadable apps for smartphones. Banks still prize the control and device-specific options
that downloadable smartphone apps offer. We looked at whether banks support customers
across four operating systems: Android, BlackBerry OS, iOS, and Windows Phone. Only Bank
of America, Chase, la Caixa, NatWest, and Rabobank have native apps for all four platforms, but
all of the banks we looked at offer at least two or three smartphone apps.
■ Tablet banking apps. In the past couple of years, banks and customers alike have rapidly moved
onto tablets: Some 14% of Western European online consumers owned a tablet in 2012, a
substantial increase from 2011 when just 7% possessed a tablet.9
La Caixa and Postbank score
full marks here, offering tablet apps for Android and the iPad. Chase offers an app for the Kindle
Fire that lets users view info and pay bills. Bank of America’s Kindle Fire app includes the firm’s
merchant-funded rewards feature. RBC’s new tablet banking app offers digital advice tools,
including videos that play within the app itself (see Figure 5). Citibank, meanwhile, continues to
refine the iPad app that first made a splash more than a year ago.10

Figure 4 TD Canada Trust Shows Current Rates For Products On Its Mobile Website
Source: TD Canada Trust mobile website

Figure 5 RBC’s New Tablet Banking App Offers Digital Advice — Including In-App Video
Source: Royal Bank Of Canada iPad app
Banks Have Made Significant Improvements To Enrollment And Login
Mobile app enrollment was once painful, with some banks requiring separate online and mobile
login credentials and offering mobile experiences that were completely different from what
customers were used to on the PC-based website. But the leading banks have substantially improved
in this area. Rabobank, Lloyds TSB, and Royal Bank of Canada stand out in this category. These
firms meet users’ expectations in this area by excelling at:
■ Enrollment. Citibank lets new users register on a mobile device without the need to use a
traditional PC-based website. Wells Fargo makes it easy for customers to turn on or off mobile
access to individual accounts.

■ Login options. Banks must meet expectations by making the mobile banking login process as
painless as possible while ensuring privacy and security — no easy balance. Bank of America
offers best-in-class options, including the ability to save credentials, store multiple users on a
single app, and delete users easily. Barclays only requires a PIN code to log in.
■ Content before login. Leading banks are recognizing that customers don’t need to be logged in
for every type of information. Rabobank was one of the first to do this, letting its customers see
their balances without logging in through its “Saldochecker” (balance checker) feature.11
Société
Générale lets mobile banking users check their balance without entering their login credentials
(see Figure 6). RBC offers a range of content and features that customers can use without
logging in, including an easy-to-use mobile currency converter and a mortgage calculator.
Figure 6 Société Générale Lets Customers See Their Balance Without Logging In
Source: Société Générale iPhone app

Account Information Is Usually Extensive, But Money Management Is Rare
Customers expect their core banking needs to be met on any remote touchpoint — from ATMs to
tablets. The core needs of customers include accessing account balances and transaction histories. La
Caixa is the overall leader in this category, but most of the other banks have also got the basics right
and did well here, too. We evaluated the account information available via mobile banking, including:
■ Balances and transaction history. All of the banks we evaluated present account balances
in a clean, easy-to-scan layout, and all of the banks offer a single-screen view of the user’s
accounts. When it comes to transaction history, only Bank of America, Citibank, Wells
Fargo, la Caixa, and NatWest offer transaction histories that go back up to 90 days and can be
searched (see Figure 7). Bank of America stands out for being the only bank that lets users
search their transaction history using keywords (see Figure 8). Limited transaction histories at
Commonwealth Bank harmed the bank’s overall score.
■ Money management features. Two of the European banks are the leaders here, with Société
Générale and Postbank offering extensive mobile money management features via their iPhone
apps. Postbank lets customers flip their phone and see their budget over a year (see Figure 9).
Société Générale’s customers can view their balance directly on the landing page thanks to a
fuel gauge design that shows how they are doing on their budget. Both Postbank and Société
Générale let their customers categorize their expenses automatically or manually (see Figure 10).
Few of the other banks offer their customers any mobile money management features.

Figure 7 La Caixa Lets Users See A Year Of Transaction History And Search Their Transactions
Source: la Caixa iPhone app

Figure 8 Bank Of America Lets Customers Search Their Transaction History With Keywords
Source: Bank of America iPhone app

Figure 9 Postbank Lets Users Flip Their Phone To Visualize Their Budget
Source: Deutsche Postbank iPhone app

Figure 10 Société Générale Lets Customers Categorize Spending Automatically Or Manually
Transactional Content And Functionality Are Increasing
As mobile banking users grow more comfortable using their smartphones for banking transactions,
they will do it more — and the importance of mobile transactional functionality will increase. This
is the category where Chase really stands out from the pack, offering an exceptionally wide range
of transactional functionality.12
Conversely, HSBC does not offer any transactions at all on its
iPhone app, contributing to its dismal overall score. In all, we looked at 11 aspects of mobile money
movement, including:
■ Account transfers. We looked at four aspects of a firm’s mobile account transfer functionality:
type, timing, source, and ability to view. All of the banks we evaluated earned positive scores
for their mobile transfer features, except HSBC. The US banks performed less well here, as
US banks typically don’t let customers transfer money to accounts at other banks, while that
functionality is standard in both online and mobile banking in other developed economies.

■ Bill payments. One of the most commonly cited use cases for mobile banking has been the
urgent and immediate need to pay a bill on time through a mobile. However, bill payment
patterns vary substantially from country to country, so this functionality is more important
to customers in some countries and customer segments than others. Chase is the only bank
to let users add a new payee directly from a mobile (see Figure 11). Commonwealth Bank of
Australia makes it easy for customers to pay bills using only the BPay biller code and customer
reference number.13
Rabobank and la Caixa both make it easy to make bill payments by taking a
photograph of the bill.14
■ Person-to-person payments. Chase, Citibank, and NatWest earn a perfect score for their
person-to-person (P2P) payment functionality. NatWest mobile banking users only need a
recipient’s mobile phone number to initiate a payment. Helpfully, NatWest and Citibank both
let users import payees and recipients from their contact list on their phone (see Figure 12).
RBC and TD Canada Trust both offer mobile P2P through Canada’s Interac e-Transfer service.15
Several other banks, including Barclays, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Rabobank, offer
person-to-person payments through separate mobile payment apps that we excluded from this
benchmark.16
Though those mobile payment apps are not fully integrated to the banks’ main
mobile banking app, the banks provide a direct link from their main mobile banking app to the
mobile payment app in the iTunes store.
Figure 11 Chase Makes Adding A Payee Easy With Contextual Info And An Efficient Task Flow
Source: Chase iPhone app

Figure 12 NatWest Lets Users Import Payees From Their Mobile Contact List
Source: NatWest iPhone app
Service Features Are Limited, While Alerts Are More Extensive
As mobile banking becomes the primary way that mobile banking users manage their money, they
will expect to be able to initiate a growing range of customer-service tasks from within mobile
banking. Few banks perform brilliantly here, though Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, and la
Caixa offer the most service features. We looked at:
■ Search. We believe that banks should make it easy for customers to search for information
or transactions through their mobile banking apps. Clearly most digital banking teams don’t
see this as a priority, as this was the only criterion that all 15 banks failed. None of the banks
we reviewed offer any type of mobile search functionality beyond the ability to search within
transaction history.
■ Help. As the complexity of mobile banking increases, digital banking teams will need to help
customers understand how to use more complex functionality, ideally with context-sensitive
help. Wells Fargo provides some of the most helpful information, offering contextual help where
mobile banking users need it (see Figure 13).

■ Alerts. All of the banks we assessed offer some type of balance, transaction, or security alerts.
Société Générale lets users set up threshold alerts within the app and select the type of alerts:
push alerts or emails (see Figure 14).
Figure 13 Wells Fargo Provides Valuable Mobile Banking Information In Context
Source: Wells Fargo iPhone app

Figure 14 Société Générale Lets Users Set Threshold Alerts
Cross-Channel Support Is Often Limited
Most mobile banking users still use other touchpoints, too. We looked at how well banks’ mobile
apps help customers get human help, how well the apps help customers find branches and ATMs,
and whether the apps are connected to banks’ social media presence. Most banks provide useful
telephone contact information, and many have good branch and ATM finders. The cross-channel
guidance we reviewed included:
■ Contact options. Banks should aim to make channel transitions as easy and convenient as
possible for customers. All of the banks we assessed provide phone numbers on their iPhone apps,
but none provide mobile chat or IM for mobile. Société Générale makes banking more personal by
enabling direct contact with bank advisors through a message inbox in its mobile app.
■ ATM and branch locators. Three of the 15 banks we evaluated received perfect scores for their
ATM and branch locator functionality, but they approach this capability in different ways. Chase
offers a street view to users to make it easier to find ATMs and branches, while Wells Fargo’s

and RBC’s iPhone apps include best-in-class ATM and branch location features such as maps,
directions, distances, phone numbers, location details, and branch phone numbers.
■ Integration with social media. We looked at how well banks incorporate links to social media
like Twitter and Facebook. Banks like Postbank and la Caixa include links to their customer
service teams on Twitter and to their Facebook accounts. La Caixa shows links to its YouTube
channel and blog. Commonwealth Bank of Australia shows live tweets in real time on its mobile
app and shows its latest Facebook feed and latest YouTube video (see Figure 15).
Figure 15 Commonwealth Bank Connects To Its Twitter, Facebook, And YouTube Accounts
Source: Commonwealth Bank of Australia iPhone app

Mobile Marketing And Sales Are Almost Nonexistent
Today, mobile banking remains focused largely on serving existing customers. But as mobile
banking displaces online banking as the hub of many customers’ relationships with their banks,
successful digital banking teams will need to use mobile touchpoints both to win new customers
and to sell more products and services to existing customers.17
Our reviews revealed a lack of mobile
research or cross-selling features among the 15 banks — much like on online banking sites a decade
ago. None did well here, though Commonwealth Bank, la Caixa, and Lloyds TSB have more on offer
than the others. We evaluated firms’ mobile:
■ Research and cross-selling. Mobile banking offers an opportunity to cross-sell to existing
clients and provides product information to folks shopping for financial products. There’s no
doubt that smartphones have limits when it comes to researching and applying, but there’s also
clear potential. Most of the banks have very little marketing in their mobile banking apps, and
the information that is there is not tailored to customers and does not take into account the
customers’ context.
■ Product application options. Only a few of the banks we assessed offer a way to apply for a
product via an iPhone app. Commonwealth Bank of Australia has a page within its mobile app
dedicated to special offers. Its credit card selector tool lets customers choose the right card and
apply for it directly from the mobile app or through another channel (see Figure 16). Capturing
sales leads is an important start to generating revenue from mobile banking.

Figure 16 Commonwealth Bank Makes Product Offers In Its App
Source: Commonwealth Bank of Australia iPhone app
Commonwealth Bank shows customers its current offers . . .16-1
. . . and lets them pick a card and apply through different channels16-2

Most Banking Apps Are Easy To Use
Great mobile banking experiences are not simply built from a checklist of features and content. A
firm’s mobile banking service must be easy for customers to understand and use.18
The substantial
experience that digital banking teams have accumulated in building online interfaces has helped
them avoid many basic errors. Many of the 15 apps scored well here, with Postbank and Société
Générale coming in at the top with outstanding scores for usability. The best apps excel at:
■ Value. Strong mobile apps make it immediately clear to the user that his or her goals can be
achieved. We looked for landing screens that include prominent links to essential content and
functionality, especially personal account information and transaction functionality. Chase’s
iPhone app offers a best-in-class example with a “pay bills” link directly within the account
summary. La Caixa lets mobile banking users customize the landing page for their mobile
banking app so they can put links relevant to them on the landing page (see Figure 17).
■ Navigation. Clear navigation is critical for mobile apps and websites because of mobile phones’
small screens. Overall navigation in the 15 apps is good; menu category names, for example, are
mostly unambiguous and don’t overlap. Most banks use a persistent menu at the bottom of the
screen to help users navigate. Wells Fargo uses an omnipresent drop-down menu to let mobile
bankers move through the app.
■ Presentation. Digital banking teams need to make it easy to read and understand mobile
content and interactive elements, and they should use graphics, icons, and other interactive
elements that make their apps more intuitive and simpler to use. La Caixa is particularly strong,
formatting account information for easy scanning and using spin wheels to help customers pick
items from lists such as monthly statements. RBC, meanwhile, has created an internal set of
mobile design standards around font sizes, colors, and touch-zone boundaries to ensure that the
presentation in its iPhone app is as user-friendly as possible.
■ Trust. Mobile banking users need to have confidence that they can rely on mobile apps. Firms
can build trust by ensuring that their apps are stable and by allaying security and privacy
concerns with clear security and privacy policies that are easy to find, easy to read, and easy to
understand. But none of the firms we assessed make it easy to find their privacy and security
policies, which are often buried deep in the app. Similarly, more contextual help would be useful
in many of the apps.

Figure 17 La Caixa Lets Users Customize Their Mobile App Landing Screen
Source: la Caixa iPhone app
R e c o m m e n d at i o n s
Mobile Banking Is Meeting Expectations; Now Try To Exceed Them
With mobile banking users’ expectations rising and substantial business at stake, digital banking
teams know they must improve their portfolios of mobile sites and apps to deliver great customer
experiences, meet business objectives, and stay ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, customers’
expectations are a moving target, and a few customers have almost ridiculously high expectations.
For better or worse, digital banking teams cannot stand still. Instead, digital banking teams should
look to get ahead of customers’ expectations by:
■ Listening to customers. Pay attention to what mobile banking users are saying about your
apps — and those of your competitors — in app stores like iTunes and Google Play. Take
inspiration from the finance-related apps people are downloading and paying for at app
stores to find opportunities for future functionality. Customers will provide you with great
insights into what they want and how you can improve what you offer today — though you
may want to sit down with a glass of wine or whisky before reading all of their feedback.19

■ Using our scorecard to benchmark their mobile banking apps. Use Forrester’s mobile
banking functionality scorecard to help identify the gaps in your current offering, see where
you fall short of international best practice, and prioritize improvements.
■ Developing context-driven features that make customers’ lives simpler. You should use
context — the sum total of what your customer has told you and is experiencing at his
moment of engagement — to identify features and functionality that will make customers’
lives simpler.20
For example, Commonwealth Bank uses location to show customers their
nearest branch and ATM on the home screen of its app.
■ Experimenting with marketing and sales offers. To make use of the full marketing
potential of mobile banking, digital banking executives should go beyond the simple
product campaigns, product pages, and calculators that some pioneers have already
implemented and start experimenting with time- and location-triggered insurance, savings,
and loan offers.
■ Regularly testing mobile features to make sure they are easy and convenient to use.
Well-thought-out mobile features can be rendered useless if they are difficult to figure
out or inconvenient to use. Ensure that you have a rigorous testing process in place that
encompasses everything from user testing, third-party benchmarks, and employee pilots for
new services.
■ Continuously improving mobile banking. The next report in this playbook looks at how
digital banking teams should run mobile banking as a mature practice that focuses on
optimizing mobile banking to achieve business objectives. It also helps teams identify new
ways to meet customers’ needs. Leaders like Société Générale and la Caixa are considering
open innovation initiatives involving employees and customers.21
Leading firms are even
opening their mobile apps to external developers.22
Supplemental MATERIAL
Benchmark Methodology
Forrester conducted its Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark evaluation of the 15 mobile
banking apps from February 20 to March 18, 2013. Our methodology involves scoring the banks’
mobile offerings across more than 50 criteria. As far as possible, we used an iPhone 4 for criteria
focused on firms’ smartphone apps and mobile websites.
If you’re interested in taking part in Forrester’s Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark or in
learning more about our ongoing mobile banking research, please contact your account manager or
contact Forrester’s inquiry team at inquiry@forrester.com.

Companies Interviewed For This Report
We would like to thank the individuals from the following companies and others who generously
gave their time during the research for this report. Several wished that their companies should
remain anonymous.
A UK bank
A UK bank
A UK bank
Bank of America
Chase
Citibank
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Deutsche Postbank
la Caixa
Lloyds TSB
Royal Bank of Canada
TD Canada Trust
Wells Fargo
Endnotes
1
We chose these 15 firms as representative of leading retail banks in developed economies worldwide. To
include a bank in the benchmark, we had to be able to access a real account or a fully functional test
account. Please note that we do not claim that the 15 firms we reviewed are the leaders worldwide, but we
believe they provide a representative benchmark of the state of mobile banking in developed economies.
2
Our logic for only including each bank’s main banking app in the benchmark is that a customer should not
need to download an additional app to complete common retail banking tasks like checking balances or
making payments. Note that by choosing to base the review on each bank’s main iPhone banking app, we
put firms that offer multiple apps — including Barclays, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and la Caixa —
at a potential disadvantage. However, the overall objective of this research is to uncover good practices, not
rank the banks.
3
In both North America and Western Europe, mobile banking users mainly use their mobile banking
application or website to check their balances, view their recent transactions, and transfer money between
their own accounts. See the August 13, 2012, “The State Of Mobile Banking 2012” report.
4
To reflect the rapid evolution of mobile banking, we have amended some of the individual criteria since our
first publication of research based on this methodology in 2012. See the April 26, 2012, “2012 US Mobile
Banking Functionality Rankings” report.
5
We develop custom weightings using data from our Consumer Technographics surveys, combined with
analyst insights and feedback from our digital banking clients.
6
The UK’s banks were slow to develop mobile banking, lagging in both customer adoption of smartphones
and banks behind elsewhere in Europe. Although the iPhone was introduced to the UK in 2007, the first
retail banking iPhone app in the UK was not until NatWest launched one in 2010. Barclays and HSBC, two

of the biggest banks in Europe, let alone the UK, didn’t offer a banking app for UK retail customers on any
smartphone platform until 2012. See the January 30, 2012, “How UK Banking Customers Use Different
Channels, 2011” report.
7
Source: North American Technographics Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), Q2 2012 (US, Canada).
8
La Caixa offers an impressive range of text banking services. Customers can use texts to transfer money to
their favorite accounts, check their account balance, check their loyalty program balance of points, transfer
money abroad (but only with financial institutions that concluded an agreement with la Caixa), check their
credit card balance, pay a purchase in instalments, extend their credit card limit, and top up their prepaid
card. Source: la Caixa (https://portal.lacaixa.es/caixamovil/store/applosms_es.html).
9
2012 was undoubtedly a pivotal year for tablets. With double-digit growth in tablet uptake across Western
Europe, about one in seven online Europeans now owns a tablet. And with further double-digit growth
expected in the years ahead, tablets are changing the consumer technology landscape. See the February 21,
2013, “The European Tablet Landscape” report.
10
In July 2011, Citibank officially launched its first-ever tablet banking app, but the true breakthrough took
place five months earlier, when eBusiness leaders at the bank began the process of developing a tablet
banking strategy and building their first iPad app. Forrester spoke with Tracey Weber, managing director,
Internet and mobile banking at Citibank, and Andres Wolberg-Stok, SVP of strategy for mobile and
emerging technologies at Citibank, about that process. To find out more, see the January 19, 2012, “Case
Study: Citibank’s Tablet App Transforms The Digital Banking Experience” report.
11
For more information about this feature in Dutch, please visit the Rabobank website (http://www.rabobank.
nl/particulieren/producten/mobiele_diensten/bankieren_op_mobiel/rabo_bankieren_app/).
12
Overall, Chase leads by offering the widest array of mobile money movement options to users: everything
from bill payments, automated clearinghouse, and wire transfers to P2P payments. Chase also offers mobile
customers the ability to set up future-dated transfers and bill payments, plus the option of adding a payee
for P2P or bill pay from within the mobile app.
13
BPay is an electronic bill payment service that Australia’s leading banks, building societies, and credit
unions offer as a core feature of Internet and phone banking.
14
Rabobank’s “acceptgiroscan” feature lets users pay bills by taking a picture of the acceptgiro (a Dutch paper
payment instrument that is similar to an invoice) with the phone’s built-in camera. Optical character
recognition (OCR) software then reads and translates the scanned image and prefills all the necessary form
fields. For more details please visit the Rabobank website (http://www.rabobank.nl/particulieren/producten/
mobiele_diensten/bankieren_op_mobiel/rabo_bankieren_app/).
15
The Interac e-Transfer service is a cooperative venture available to Canadian financial firms.
16
Barclays offers person-to-person payments through its Pingit app and Commonwealth Bank of Australia
through its Kaching app.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia enables multiple types of payment, including transfers between a
customer’s own accounts, transfers to other accounts, bill payments through Australia’s BPay service,
MasterCard PayPass payments at the point of sale (using an iCarte case, not an integrated NFC chip),
payments to friends through email addresses and mobile numbers, and even payments through Facebook.
For more information, visit its website: http://www.commbank.com.au/mobile/commbank-kaching/what-
is-kaching.html.
Pingit lets users send money to a recipient using the recipient’s phone number or pay a business using a QR
code. For more information, visit the Barclays website: http://www.barclays.co.uk/Mobile/BarclaysPingit/
P1242603570446.
17
To make use of the full marketing potential of mobile banking, digital banking executives should go
beyond the simple product campaigns, product pages, and calculators that some pioneers have already
implemented and start experimenting with time- and location-triggered insurance, savings, and loan offers.
See the April 5, 2011, “The Time Is Right To Start Experimenting With Mobile Banking For Marketing And
Sales” report.
18
If you think mobile app design is about choosing the best development tools and designing for a smaller
screen size, guess again. To deliver apps your users will love, you must design and develop a user experience
that is useful, usable, and desirable and that takes into account the mobile context, and you have to design
for emotion. See the August 7, 2012, “Design Mobile Apps From The Outside In” report.
19
While customer feedback in iTunes, Google Play, and other venues is a very useful indicator of what
functionality customers want, it is also obvious from reading customer feedback that some customers have
extremely high expectations, and a few provide feedback that is harsh and occasionally even nasty.
20
Consumers will adopt and use convenient services and products. In mobile, this translates to services
that offer immediacy and simplicity through a highly contextual experience. The ability to deliver highly
contextual experiences will increase in sophistication with the technologies embedded in mobile phones.
eBusiness and channel strategy professionals must use context to deliver the right information at the right
time to the right place to increase conversions. See the May 1, 2012, “The Future Of Mobile eBusiness Is
Context” report.
21
Product innovation isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have, particularly in light of the rapid changes taking
place at the intersection of technology and consumer behavior. Product strategists must update their closed
product innovation processes with open innovation initiatives to keep pace with the rapid changes affecting
markets and end user customers. See the June 11, 2012, “Revolutionize Products Through Open Innovation”
report.
22
To help it develop new mobile services, la Caixa organized a 24-hour “FinAppsParty,” during which
participants competed to create new mobile banking apps. La Caixa organized its first FinAppsParty in
Barcelona in November 2011. The 24-hour event attracted more than 100 developers and resulted in 40
proposals for different applications. Source: “‘la Caixa’ organises the first FinAppsParty in Barcelona, to
attract talent to mobile banking development,” la Caixa press release, November 11, 2011 (http://press.
lacaixa.es/caixabank/press-releases/la-caixa-organises-the-first-finappsparty-in-barcelona-to-attract-talent-
to-mobile-banking-development__1775-c-15176__.html).

Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to
global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 17 key roles at major companies providing proprietary
research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 29 years, Forrester has been making
IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day. For more information, visit www.forrester.com. 75591
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