Mobile banking success is a moving target: Customers needs and expectations are changing rapidly, and eBusiness teams at banks are sprinting to get ahead of their customers’ expectations. To achieve this, firms are rolling out new features, optimizing existing services, and enhancing mobile experiences.  

To understand which firms are leading in mobile banking — and to better gauge the mobile banking landscape overall — we used our Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark to evaluate and rank the mobile banking efforts of 15 of the largest banks in North America, Western Europe, and Australia.

Our findings across all the banks we evaluated can be found in our 2013 Global Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings. We've also published two additional reports looking at the banks we reviewed in the UK and the US: 2013 UK Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings and 2013 US Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings

Highlights of this research include these findings:

  • Chase takes the top spot overall. Chase received the highest overall score among the banks we evaluated, netting a score of 71 out of 100. The bank offers mobile banking services across a range of touchpoints ranging from smartphone apps, strong mobile websites, and two-way SMS. In addition, Chase also has strong mobile money movement features such as bill pay – including the ability to add a payee – and mobile transfer capabilities.
  • 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 — and landed in second place among the 15 banks we ranked worldwide. The bank excels at offering convenient experiences for common mobile banking activities. For example, La Caixa lets mobile bankers customize the landing screen on its iPhone app (see below).
  • Banks in the US and Canada score well in general. 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.
  • UK banks 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. 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. 

We encourage you to read the reports and let us know your thoughts!

[co-authored with Stephen Walker, Benjamin Ensor, and Myriam Da Costa ]