Definition of 'Mobile Banking'

Mobile Banking is a system that allows customers of a financial institution to conduct a number of financial transactions through a mobile device such as a mobile phone or personal digital assistant.

Mobile banking differs from mobile payments, which involve the use of a mobile device to pay for goods or services either at the point of sale or remotely, analogously to the use of a debit or credit card to effect an EFTPOS payment.

The earliest mobile banking services were offered over SMS, a service known as SMS banking. With the introduction of smart phones with WAP support enabling the use of the mobile web in 1999, the first European banks started to offer mobile banking on this platform to their customers.

Mobile banking has until recently (2010) most often been performed via SMS or the mobile web. Apple's initial success with iPhone and the rapid growth of phones based on Google's Android (operating system) have led to increasing use of special client programs, called apps, downloaded to the mobile device. With that said, advancements in web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript have seen more banks launching mobile web based services to complement native applications. A recent study (May 2012) by Mapa Research suggests that over a third of banks[3] have mobile device detection upon visiting the banks' main website. A number of things can happen on mobile detection such as redirecting to an app store, redirection to a mobile banking specific website or providing a menu of mobile banking options for the user to choose from.


Keywords: Mobile Banking, customers ,financial institution,financial transactions, mobile device, mobile phone , mobile payments,analogously ,debit , credit card,EFTPOS payment, SMS, smart phones, WAP, mobile web, iPhone , Google's Android ,operating system, client programs, called apps, HTML5, CSS3 ,JavaScript, Mapa Research, website