On March 27, 2013, the Federal Reserve released a report on consumers’ use of mobile banking and mobile payments.  The report follows a similar report issued by the Federal Reserve last year.  The report found that use of mobile banking has increased significantly in the past year while use of mobile payments has increased as well. 

As of November 2012, 28 percent of all mobile phone users (compared to 21 percent in December 2011) and 48 percent of smartphone users (compared to 42 percent in December 2011) had used mobile banking in the past 12 months.  The recent report found that 15 percent of all smartphone users have made a payment from their phone in the past 12 months, compared to 12 percent of users from the prior report.  In addition, the use of mobile phones to deposit checks has doubled in the past year, rising from approximately 10 percent to 21 percent.      

The most common uses of mobile banking are to check account balances or recent transactions (87 percent of users) and to transfer money between accounts (53 percent of users).  The most common use of mobile payments is to make online bill payments (42 percent of users).  Six percent of all smartphone users have made a point-of-sale payment using their phone in the past 12 months, which represents a sizable increase from the one percent of users in December 2011. 

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