SAN DIEGO—Mobile account opening will overtake desktop account opening by 20% in 2016, according to a new forecast.
That’s one prediction regarding the mobile space that Mitek is making for 2016. The company recently spoke with CUToday.info about what it is predicting lies ahead for mobile next year.
Mitek said its forecast is based on studying the mobile preferences and economic impact of Millennials, speaking with many leading financial institutions and mobile payments providers in the U.S., and observing the changes in the mobile landscape,
Sarah Clark VP of product at Mitek Systems, said mobile account opening will overtake desktop account opening next year as the result of all the investment FIs have made in the mobile channel, and because there is simply is a big shift underway regarding consumers’ use of mobile devices.
“There has been a tremendous shift to mobile account opening in the last year and that will continue in 2016,” said Clark, who added that for FIs to be successful with online account opening they must have a “responsive website. That is a big part of this.”
Other predictions:
Biometrics become the norm: In 2016, biometrics will be used for nearly 50% of mobile transactions including banking, shopping and enrollment.
“That is a big prediction and we recognize that,” said Clark. “But we believe there will be amazing momentum around biometrics next year, and it will become a core user experience with mobile devices.”
Clark pointed to a number of successful rollouts by banks in 2015 with facial recognition software to access customer accounts.
“And there is a movement in the financial services industry to kill the password, recognizing that ‘what you know factors,’ such as passwords, are not the most secure way to authenticate users,” Clark said.
Clark added that with Apple and Android phones making fingerprint scanning a much more commonplace experience for consumers, that is paving the way for greater consumer acceptance of biometrics.
Smartphones get smarter than people when it comes to fraud: In 2016, online and mobile technology will become as good, if not better, than humans at verifying a user’s identity, bringing fraud losses down 15% in the mobile channel.
Clark explained that “computer vision” has reached the point where mobile phone cameras are now able to verify user ID data, such as a driver’s license, better than a person.
“That mobile device can tell more definitively than a human if that driver’s license is authentic,” said Clark. “When you pair that with the other capabilities inherent to mobile devices, such as geolocation and the accelerometer—which helps you spot trends in how users hold their mobile devices—you have a platform that is very powerful in terms of ID verification.”
Real applicants get the respect they deserve in the mobile channel: Companies will double the amount of approved customers from the mobile channel by decreasing their pending queue.
Clark said that those with thin credit histories, such as Millennials and the underbanked, won’t have to wait as long for credit approval decisions, as mobile devices will make it faster to identify who they are.
“Right now most people with thin credit histories are placed into a pending queue, where they wait for someone inside the financial institution to verify who they are,” said Clark. “We see this changing given the opportunity to use more mobile methods to ID who the applicant is, such as scanning a driver’s license or another document, or linking to carrier data associated with the mobile device.”