A survey of more than 13,000 US consumers by research firm Javelin Strategy & Research has found mobile banking usage has plateaued thanks to growing concerns among respondents over whether using their handsets for financial transactions is secure.  Despite fast-growing smartphone penetration in the US, the research firm found the rate of adoption of mobile banking barely increased between 2010 and 2011.  And in a striking statistic, Javelin says that while one in four of smartphone owners saw mobile banking as unsafe in 2009 that statistic shot up to 40 percent in the space of one year to 2010. “This study is a wake-up call to FIs (financial institutions) to look into what consumers really want,” says Philip Blank (pictured), Javelin’s managing director of security, risk and fraud.

Blank says banks and other financial institutions need to really address consumer concerns around security and communicate to them how committed they are to creating “a safe and trusted channel” for mobile banking. In a bid to build confidence among consumers, banks have to show they are acting against security threats. Javelin points out how its survey captured consumers’ reluctant attitude towards mobile banking even before this year’s wave of data breaches and instances of malware in the Android Market. For the survey, Javelin pulled together data from three individual surveys between 2010-11, the most recent of which was in March 2011.