Anti-trend: Accessing Internet Banking via Desktop is More Popular than via Mobile

Lately, we are always been surprised by mobile industry in Indonesia that is increasing fast, supported by the fast growth of users, even compared to  developed country. Some statistics shows that Indonesia is on the top 5 of countries with the highest mobile growth. The surprising thing is that the banking transaction shows the opposite trends.

Recently, Bank Mandiri stated that the number of mobile banking users on their platform is less than internet banking via desktop (full web) users. By now, Bank Mandiri has 11 million customers and the adoption of e-Banking increases very fast.

“As an illustration, from 4 million customers who are registered on mobile banking service, only 600-700 thousands of them are actively using the service ” said Rico Usthavia Frans, SVP of Bank Mandiri Electronic Banking Group as cited on Detiknet. It is contrast with the fact that the smartphone adoption growth way exceeding the growth of desktop/laptop adoption.

The biggest possibility is might be related to User Interface on mobile that seems to be less comfortable. It affects the trust from users to use mobile banking. Personally, I use both mobile and internet banking but it seems that my experience on mobile banking is not as good as accessing via desktop. Surely, this problem can be solved by the banks and I'm sure that it is not that hard to fix their mobile app/web, isn’t it?

There are also some other factors like internet connection on mobile device that sometime is not reliable. I had experienced of almost failing to do transaction via mobile banking because my 3G connection suddenly disconnected. This infrastructure problem seems to be the obstacle for mobile banking.