Skip to main content

Digital Banking Users will Reach 2 Billion Worldwide

The retail banking sector continues to pursue digital transformation projects. Mobile devices are key to their strategy, as banks move to a ‘mobile first’ approach. It's a global trend supported by the scale of a declining financial services workforce, and the number of physical branches.

According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, over 2 billion users will access retail banking services via smartphones, media tablets, PCs and smartwatches in 2018 -- that's up by 10 percent year-over-year.

Digital Banking Market Development

The new research found that accelerated adoption in key emerging markets -- such as India and China -- means that mobile banking users now represent 50 percent of the global banked population. Juniper expects that the number of global mobile banking users will now overtake online users in 2018 -- 2 years earlier than previously anticipated.

2017 saw banks worldwide engaging in both technology investments and new tech offerings, although the extent of these activities varied considerably.

Juniper analyzed leading tier-1 banks to evaluate their 'digital transformation readiness' scores and highlight their respective positioning within the digital innovation roadmap.


According to the Juniper assessment, the leading group of banks include: Banco Santander, Bank of America, Barclays, BBVA, BNP Paribas, Citi, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, RBS, Societe Generale, UniCredit and Wells Fargo.

These banks once again scored highly, offering a wide range of digital banking portfolios and investing in the rapid development of technology and customer enablement.

"They were found to be in the mature phase of digital transformation, approaching the final stages of objectives as defined in their current roadmap. These players also lead in customer training and employee development programs, with regards to digital technology," said Nitin Bhas, head of research at Juniper Research.

Outlook for Global Digital Banking Growth

As these banks continue towards digital transformation, technology offerings are also becoming increasingly advanced. For example, chatbot offerings deliver a greater differentiation from a normal app experience, particularly where customer service is concerned.

Juniper estimates customer service cost savings achieved through the deployment of conversational chatbot platforms will reach $4.5 billion by 2022.

Popular posts from this blog

The Impending GenAI Security Debt

Organizations that were experimenting with Applied-AI in isolated pilot programs just two years ago are now embedding it into core workflows, customer-facing products, and business-critical infrastructure. But as technology matures, a troubling pattern is emerging: speed of deployment is consistently outpacing the security discipline required to protect it. A new Gartner market study exposes the risk that many technology leaders have instinctively sensed but struggled to quantify. GenAI Security Market Development By 2028, 25 percent of all enterprise generative AI (GenAI) applications will experience at least five minor security incidents per year, that's up from just 9 percent in 2025. That represents nearly a threefold increase in less than three years, and the trend does not stop there. Gartner further projects that by 2029, 15 percent of all enterprise GenAI apps will experience at least one major security incident per year, compared to only 3 percent in 2025. Meanwhile, the d...