A few months ago the UX Alliance asked its members around the globe to evaluate mobile banking applications within their country. The result was a unique insight into banking apps from over 20 countries across 5 continents.

There were lots of detailed observations about what makes a really good banking app, but fundamentally what it showed was how far behind the Irish banks are when it comes to mobile.

And it’s not just the countries who you’d expect to have good mobile banking, even the less usual suspects — Chile, Russia, South Africa and Poland — offer their customers more than the big banks here in Ireland:

And this point was underscored by a 2011 Forrester report which found that 87% of big European banks offer smartphone apps.

So how do the Irish banks stack up on mobile?

For the moment, let’s ignore National Irish Bank; we’ll talk about them later. So what we see is that two of the banks — permanent tsb and Ulster Bank — have good SMS offerings. SMS is really quite a handy little tool, and because it’s just text messages, it completely sidesteps the issue of operating system and device fragmentation (which is surely the single biggest challenge of mobile). But SMS banking is just a supplement; it’s a sideshow to the primary workhorse of desktop online banking service.

Now, once we move up the mobile food chain, we really start to see a stark picture. None of the 4 main banks have a mobilized website.

But 2 of them do have mobile apps, right? Well let’s look a little closer.

Bank of Ireland’s iPhone app

There’s little doubt what happened here — someone in BoI said, “Quick, we need an iPhone app!”. So they built an app that tells you where (only) BoI ATMs are around the country.

It’s almost an internal project of just getting your toes wet in the mobile sea. But as public mobile offering for your customers?

The reviews in iTunes are pretty harsh (and in fairness, they often are in the app store). Here’s a snippet of one:

Most UK banks have mobile banking sites and apps…Meanwhile we’re ploughing millions into ours and all we get is a poxy glorified map.

 

The app doesn’t pretend to be anything other than it is, but a quick look through the reviews shows how a token mobile effort like this can actually backfire from a PR point of view.

Ulster Bank’s iPhone app

Unlike BoI, Ulster Bank’s app does actually qualify as mobile banking. You can get the bare essentials, like your balance and a mini-statement. And you can manage your text alerts.

But really this is just SMS banking dressed up as a mobile app. Compare the app snapshot above to the image below of the SMS mini-statement:

The app is a step up from pure SMS — it’s a little easier and more convenient —  but it’s a very small step up.

So there’s simply no debating the fact that the main Irish banks are way behind on mobile.

And now NIB has upstaged them all

I bet when I say “National Irish Bank” you’re initially confusing them with someone else — “Aren’t they one of the banks that got swallowed up in the banking fiasco?” No, they’re not Irish Nationwide. But I’d be surprised if you have an account with them, as they’re one of the smaller banks in the country.

But when it comes to mobile, they’ve completely leapfrogged the competition. Here’s what their iPhone and Android apps — which they just launched a couple weeks ago — look like:

The point here isn’t that they’ve nailed the design. For example, the rotary-wheel effect on the home screen is simply a pointless UI gimmick. (It takes the ConvertBot app’s already questionable UI innovation and adapts it as a primary navigation tool.) The app is also missing a good overview for customers with multiple accounts. But in the context of what’s on offer in Ireland, those details are nitpicking.

The point is that N.I.B. now has a solid foundation for mobile banking.  And looking at their initial reviews in the app stores (even assuming that a good bunch of these are really from NIB themselves) — they’ve genuinely delighted their customers:

Customers will be happy with the basics

Here’s the thing about mobile banking — it’s not about bells and whistles and unusual UI interactions. It’s about letting your customers do some fundamental things:

• check their balance, across multiple accounts
• view their account history
• pay bills
• transfer money to other accounts

This point was underscored by our UX Alliance partners and Forrester’s survey on what mobile banking customers actually use their phones for.

Sure, there’s lots of other functionality that’s nice to offer, like mobile phone topups, ATM locators, good account data visualisation, or the futuristic deposit-a-check-by-taking-a-photo-of-it (like Chase in the U.S. offers), or even little touches like making real use of your customers’ phone by letting them add their own photos to account beneficiaries (like ANZ does).

But those can be part of the evolution of an offering — it’s not what customers are clamoring for.

Reality check — didn’t you hear that Irish banks are a little cash-strapped?

Of course, all this has been written as if there hadn’t been this small little blip a few years ago of the Irish banking crisis. The reality is that these banks are probably thinking — “Sure, we’d love to invest in mobile, but that’s simply a luxury we can’t afford right now. We don’t have the advantage that N.I.B. has — they just ported over their parent company’s (Danske bank) app design!”

And this brings me to the big point: mobile banking may seem like a nice-to-have feature for right now, but in 5 years, maybe even 3, this will be the foundation of your relationship with your customers. Desktop will begin to lose relevance, and the phone will be your customers’ first choice for how to do banking.

Peak desktop

We’ve all seen the stats about how smartphones outsold PCs last year. But that’s just sales of new stuff. The important date will be around 2015 — that’s when it’s estimated that mobile access will start to trump desktop online access. It’s like peak oil, except let’s call it “Peak desktop”.

Here’s another eye-catching figure: last year Google Gmail web-based email was down by 7%, but there was a 36% increase in mobile email.

Not everything is well suited to mobile. But mobile banking is — it’s really well suited to mobile. Not just when I’m on the go, but when I’m at home sitting on the couch. It can competently cover 95% of what I need to do with my bank. It’s simpler, it’s faster, and it’s just so damn convenient.

So going mobile isn’t a choice for the banks — it’s a mandate. Even for banks who are still climbing out the hole that’s been dug over the last several years.