The UK Is Becoming A Nation Of Mobile Bankers

British consumers are increasingly ditching their high-street bank in favour of checking their accounts on their mobile, new figures have found, with Londoners leading the way.

The capital came in top of a national survey of banking habits by mobile payments firm Paym, with 60 percent of its residents saying that they used a smartphone to access bank accounts.

And the growing popularity of mobile banking was shown by the fact that one in three people who use a banking app check it every day.

On the go

Behind London, Northern Ireland (59 percent), scored highest in terms of mobile banking use, with the North East and Yorkshire (48 percent), Wales and West (47 percent) and North West (46 percent) regions following close behind.

Paym, which lets users send money with just a mobile number, put this recent increase down to the increasingly large role mobile devices are playing in our everyday lives.

It found that Brits now spend an average of one hour nine minutes each day surfing the internet on their smartphones – nearly matching the one hour 16 minutes spent connecting to the internet using computers and laptops.

“Smartphones have revolutionised our day-to-day lives, so it’s no surprise they are doing the same to how we manage our money,” Craig Tillotson, Chairman of Paym, which has 3.2 million registered customers across the UK.

“More than one in three people who use a mobile banking app log-in every day, helping to make idle moments like train journeys more productive. Paym adds even more simplicity to this convenience – it’s possible to pay back a friend using their mobile number wherever you are, whenever you want.”

A study by analyst firm Juniper Research predicted that that the number of annual purchases made via mobiles, tablets, desktops and other connected devices should reach 125 billion annually by 2018 – 60 percent more than the total number of transactions in 2015.

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