UK online banking transactions near £1 bn a day
08 Jul 2014
With the UK public increasingly taking to digital banking, the internet now accounted for transactions worth almost £1 billion a day.
Almost one in 10 people across the UK logged in for some form of internet banking service each day, with over three in four people using online banking at least once a month.
According a new report by the British Bankers Association (BBA), the statistics showed the shift to online and mobile banking with more and more customers shunning traditional branches.
According to The Way We Bank Now, a new report produced by the banking lobby group, internet and mobile banking transactions worth £6.4 billion a week were now being processed, up from £5.8 billion at the time of the publication of the first such report a year ago.
The number of mobile banking apps downloaded for mobile phones and tablet computers had gone up by 2.3 million since January and stood at 14.7 million in all, till date.
The report further revealed the extent of digital innovation in banking, with the spend on contactless debit cards for example now expected to rise to £6.1 million a week this year, up from £3.2 million in 2013.
Internet banking services were now typically registering 7 million log-ins each day.
The report further projected that spending on contactless cards would increase to £6.1 million a week this year from £3.2 million in 2013.
The Telegraph quoted BBA chief executive Anthony Browne as saying the report showed just how enthusiastically the British public was embracing mobile banking contactless cards and a range of other consumer-friendly banking technologies.
According to the Royal Bank of Scotland it was inevitable that it would close more of its 1,900 branches after branch transactions declined by 30 per cent over the past three years. Barclays, Lloyds and HSBC were also expected to close branches, industry sources said.
However, according to the Campaign for Community Banking Services, a lobby group, further closures could have a damaging impact on smaller rural communities that relied on local branches for their banking services and called for measures such as branch sharing to avoid those which were the last left in a particular area being shut down.
