In the last eight years, different banks again and again tried to establish banking via mobile phone. Indeed, the only ones interested in it seemed to be the banks themselves. Even in October 2007, the thought of mobile banking made the US-Americans still yawn.

With the beginning of the new year, or maybe even a little earlier, the relation seems to have changed. While last fall mobile phone users still reacted in a bored way to mobile banking, currently 16 percent are busy with not only checking their account status on the go, but also conducting transactions. And of those not being busy right now, more than 30 percent are interested in getting it started. This claims a late-breaking study of the market research institution Harris Interactive.

In October 2007 only nine percent used their mobile phone for banking. This means an increase of seven percent within a few months, so nearly a doubling of the number of users. Is this realistic? Has, after several failures, finally the time for mobile banking come?

Other results of the study make your ears prick up as well: 20 percent of the respondents would like to use their mobile phone as “mobile wallet” in future. Also this is surprising, given that mobile payment mainly in the developing world has rapidly gained popularity until now.

In Germany, the status quo is still obscure. While in April Key Pousttchi, business data processing specialist at the University of Augsburg, held that mobile banking rather has to be understood as “information” than as “transaction”, in October a research team of the TU Hamburg-Harburg proclaimed much more with the title of their study: “Mobile Banking evolves into a standard application in Germany”.

The online magazine “Computerwoche” wrote “Mobile Banking takes a new run” at the beginning of February. The German providers O₂ and Vodafone announced a mobile payment system at the end of January. In the US already 25 percent of the asked users who have a mobile internet access use their mobile phone to buy goods and services. Will this number be transferred to Germany soon?

The biggest barrier is, according to Harris Interactive, the fear of sensitive financial data’s security. 63 percent of the respondents are afraid of becoming victims of scam and fraud through the transmission of data, 61 percent fear losing the mobile phone and with it losing their personal financial information.

Mobile technology of course is being improved, but with the professionalization of the mobile software, mainly with smartphones, the probability for malware is increasing, too. On the other hand, smartphone owners are much more enthusiastic mobile bankers. And most of the surfers also don’t stop banking via PC just because of possible fraud.

Entirely clearly there must be distinguished between mobile banking and mobile payment. While mobile payment for sure is going to establish itself and particularly will replace small coins, mobile banking, despite of growing popularity, in the long term probably has to find itself a place in the shadows and stay a phenomenon limited to a small, very busy part of society. Financial affairs so urgent that they have to be done while away from home, are simply very seldom.