Some interesting data was released today from the American Bankers Association (press release). According to its annual telephone survey of 1000 U.S. consumers, online/Internet banking is now the most common banking method among U.S. consumers (note 1).
Here are the totals (see notes 2, 3):
Question: Which banking method do you use most often?
| Channel | 2009 | 2008 | Net Difference | Percent Change |
| Online/Internet | 32% | 25% | Up 7.5 points | + 30% |
| Branches | 28% | 34% | Down 6.6 | (24%) |
| ATM | 22% | 28% | Down 5.6 | (20%) |
| Mail (note 3) | 11% | 9.1% | Up 1.9 | +21% |
| Telephone (note 3) | 5.8% | 4.1% | Up 1.7 | +41% |
| Mobile (note 3) | 0.6% | 1.0% | Down 0.4 | (40%) |
| Total | 100% | 100% | — | — |
Source: American Bankers Association, telephone survey of 1000 U.S. consumers conducted by Ipsos-Reid, on August 14-16-2009
Notes:
1. Remember, this reflects households willing to take a telephone survey but who may or may not use the Internet. If you are surprised to see online usage trailing branch usage until this year, you may be thinking of research results from other surveys of online users, who have long preferred online banking over other delivery channels.
2. Unlike the ABA release, I’ve eliminated all the Don’t know, Unsure, and Other responses from the totals. So, the figures above represent the delivery-channel penetration of customers who named a single one from the list read to them.
3. The changes in mail, telephone and mobile seem odd. It’s possible that the way the question was constructed accounts for these counter-intuitive results in the lesser-cited categories. In 2009, respondents were given two new choices: “other” and “none of these.” In 2008, without those two bail-out choices, more customers chose one of the six channels read to them over the phone. In 2008, 110 respondents out of 1000 said don’t know, unsure, etc. In 2009, that number doubled to 226 respondents out of 1002.
4. Image credit: Bank of Hawaii.