OREANDA-NEWS. August 22, 2012. Alongside with a rapid increase in the number of smart phones and a drop in the mobile Internet price in Lithuania there has been a rise in the popularity of mobile banking. According to SEB Bank’s statistics, over the fist half-year of 2012, the number of log-ins to the SEB Bank’s Mobile Internet Banking has increased three times as compared to the same period in 2011, and an increase in the number of executed money transfers has been five-fold, reported the press-centre of SEB Bank.

SEB Bank’s data indicate that Lithuanians on average access Mobile Internet Banking once a week and make money transfers three times a month on average. Mobile Banking users also regularly view their account balances, the history of transactions and follow FX rates. At the end of June 2012, as compared to the statistics of June 2011, there has been a five-fold rise in the number of SEB Bank’s Mobile Banking users.

“Mobile phone technologies are characterised by continuous development resulting in a very rapid change in customer habits. For this reason, last year we had a special focus on the improvement of services via mobile phone – we updated our Internet banking website specially adapting it for mobile phones, launched software for smart phone users enabling to use banking services by phone in a prompt and secure way,“ said Vice President and Head of Retail Banking Division of SEB Bank Virginijus Doveika.

V. Doveika went on to say that a rise in the popularity of mobile banking will be to a large extent influenced by mobile e-signature that the bank offered its customers in March this year – mobile e-signature serves as a password card or a digipass and offers still more convenience in using banking services via a mobile phone.

“Global research has shown that the main requirement people raise as regards banking services via a mobile phone is security. Mobile e-signature secures that no one except the owner of a mobile phone who knows special PIN numbers will have a possibility to execute a financial transaction. We see that after we offered to use mobile e-signature, the popularity of banking services by mobile phones and tablet PCs started increasing even more rapidly,” V. Doveika says.

Mobile banking has been rapidly increasing in popularity not only in Lithuania, but also globally. According to the data of International agency Juniper Research specialising in IT and technology sector research, in 2010 there were about 200 million mobile banking users in the world, and in 2013 it is forecasted that their number will sore up to 400 million.