Finance

We polled over 1,000 people about what they want from their mobile banking app. Here's what they care about most — and least.

Most and least desirable features- mobile banking
Business Insider Intelligence's list of top most and least desirable mobile features. Business Insider Intelligence
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People use their phones to find dates, trade stocks, and even order helicopter rides. They are also, increasingly, using their phones to bank.

With myriad banking apps out there from Wells Fargo to Chime, both big banks and up-and-coming fintechs are racing to include features that are important to potential customers. But what do they want? It's security and control features, according to a study conducted by Business Insider Intelligence of over 1,000 customers. 

As data breaches continue to make the news, it's not totally surprising that customers are overwhelmingly focused on security. The most popular smartphone feature, putting a temporary hold on a card, was rated as extremely valuable by nearly half of people polled by BII. It allows customers to protect themselves from fraud while potentially avoiding the inconvenience of getting a replacement card.

Customers are hungry for products that can balance security with convenience. They rated both the ability to dispute charges and to view the status of disputed charges in their apps in the top five most popular features. These dreaded tasks can be stressful enough without the challenges of actually doing them in-person or over-the-phone. Even though consumer demand is high, only five banks allow you to dispute charges in their app (Capital One, Citibank, US Bank, USAA, and Wells Fargo) and only two allow you to view the status of disputed charges in app (Citibank and Wells Fargo). Wells Fargo was the only bank in the study to have all the security features found in the study.

Another very in-demand feature, the ability to login with a fingerprint scan, is directly tied to advancements in smartphone technology. With the coming ubiquity of face scan technology, expect that to become a main expectation for customers in coming years as well. Banks are ahead of customers; all but two banks offered face scans (Regions and BMO Harris were the outliers). 

But mobile banking customers said they're less interested in voice and chat features, even as half of banks in the study had at least one of those features in their app. These features, including the ability to bank through an Amazon Echo or Google home and the ability to bank with a chatbot within a banking app, made up the four lowest spots in customer demand in the study. This may be because of security concerns; according to a previous Business Insider Intelligence study which showed that the main reason customers avoided voice payments was because of security concerns. Banks see this technology as a way to provide more personalized attention to their customers, without having to hire more human employees. Some banks are actually having their chatbots proactively reach out, in hopes that this will make customers feel more comfortable with the technology.

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This post originally appeared on BI Intelligence, a subscription research service for professionals who work on the forefront of digital. To receive more of our research, please sign-up for a trial subscription at intelligence.jkmperu.com

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Alex Nicoll
Alex Nicoll
Alex is a reporter at Business Insider writing about how people, from billionaires to penny-pinchers, save, invest, and manage their money. He previously covered private credit and equity, real estate, and real estate technology for Business Insider.Recently, he's covered Steve Schwarzman's hidden family office, private capital's push into your retirement account, a massive Airbnb tax-break unlocked by President Trump, and the ex-McKinsey consultant connecting Zohran Mamdani to the business world. According to one Fortune 500 CEO, he's a "fringe reporter."Before joining Business Insider in 2019, he worked for Bridgewater Associates and Peloton. He is the interim vice-chair of the Insider Union.He welcomes any and all reachouts, prioritizes his source's safety, and has a long record of working with confidential sources to tell deeply reported, complicated stories. He loves to yap.Get in touch! Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at @alexnicoll.01 using a non-work phone, email at anicoll@jkmperu.com or alexonicoll@protonmail.com, or Twitter DM at @nicollsanddimes