Why E-banking and Mobile Banking Are Not That Appealing to Consumers?

Editor's note : After Rama wrote about desktop vs mobile banking, we have a guest post by Dolly Surya Wisaka on the same matter but from the perspective of his experience and opinion on using and developing both e-banking and mobile banking systems, as well as suggestions on how to make these services more appealing for users.

Intrigued after reading the e-banking vs m-banking post on Detikinet and DailySocial, a statement quoted from one of the executives of Bank Mandiri that might show no harm for common people. But I feel obliged to point out my concerns regarding the misuse of the information to give the wrong conclusion.

In this opportunity I would like to share my thoughts on online and mobile banking based on my own experience and this discussion will be limited to those services only so we can focus on the issue.

First, let's describe e-banking and mobile banking.

e-banking is a banking service done through the Internet via a connected device. That terminal device can be a laptop, personal computer, smartphone, tablet computer, etc. Basically every device that uses the browser to access the bank's web page and service system. For smartphone and tablet users however - mobile - it is more efficient for the bank to provide them with a more mobile-friendly page for them to do the transactions. The question is: do all banks have this feature?

The second one is mobile banking. It was believed that this service will be telco/carrier's top service for their consumers. Currently, there are three technology models used: STK (Sim Tool Kit), USSD and SMS.

Based on my observation and experience, using e-banking is not a common thing. Maybe only a few times a month per person. Why? Because users have to be comfortable with using the physical token device given by the bank. As if using token is not complicated enough, the hassle when you lose your token can be pretty annoying. It's quite a predicament because not every bank has its own mobile-friendly website for users to perform transactions.

Different from e-banking, mobile banking is actually much more practical to do transactions because you can do it from almost everywhere as long as you have a network coverage.

I also noted that there are three big problems for these services to become popular. First, is the registration process. Second is the lack of standard of service from banks and carriers. Third, banks and carriers should do more promotion to socialize these services.

Technically, mobile banking is way more complicated compared to e-banking, demanding more stability on the carrier's and bank's infrastructures. E-banking requires a huge bandwidth and basically a good stable Internet connection as the communication line. A mobile friendly website is definitely a good solution for consumers, looking at the high smartphone adoption rate, for people to do transactions on the go.

My advice to get the consumers excited about e-banking and mobile banking :

1. Extensive promotion for special programs and features for e-banking and mobile banking transactions
2. Simplify the registration process
3. Standarize the service to make it easier for users
4. Use verification technology, move from token-based to (maybe) sms-based?
5. Lower the cost for mobile banking
6. I personally believe that if the number of e/m-banking users increase, the banks should be happier because it decreases the operational cost.

I hope this post is useful for everyone.

Dolly Surya Wisaka spent 9 years at XL focusing on mobile data service. He also assisted Multiply to develop a payment gateway for e-commerce. You can follow him on Twitter @dollysw.