The website of Allied Irish Banks gives customers lofty promises of easy access to their accounts through the use of their computer or their phone, allowing for all sorts of easy transactions from wherever and whenever he or she is able to connect.
Where it fails to deliver, however, is with a true mobile app; oddly an iPhone or Android mobile banking application is not offered, and what’s more, AIB recommends against using any of the applications available that promise to work in such a fashion, saying it goes against the terms of service to hand out one’s password to any program.
This is short-sighted thinking, and should be swiftly corrected by anyone who has the ability to see why this is likely to result in upset customers. AIB is failing to capitalize on this new market, and, while there is no hard cash at stake, they risk alienating their customer base, who are increasing moving to smart phones and mobile apps in ever-increasing droves. They ignore such trends at their own peril.
Well, maybe not peril, but there are certainly a number of advantages that mobile apps offer over conventional methods of account access that both customers and banks can benefit from, and as the world moves toward mobile methods of access, consumers left without mobile support will get annoyed at how their friends are able to deal with such issues slightly faster.
Firstly, there is the issue of convenience; as pitiful as it may seem, humanity will favor even the slightest increase in speed or ease and use such methods exclusively after moving to them. This means that mobile apps, which do not require typing in the site URL, will always be one click away, and no one will ever use the built-in browser ever again. Secondly, the mobile apps are designed to take advantage of the screen size of the device, rather than a larger computer screen, and are thus more suitable to its dimensions. This can be mitigated with mobile versions of sites, but this can be made even faster by simply containing the graphical information on the device itself, which then does not need to be sent back and forth to the server. This is, of course, a relatively minor point, but is nonetheless something that, if scaled up to affect millions of users, will have a more significant impact.
Banks also overestimate the security concerns of mobile phones. While certainly a major issue that banks should be concerned with, this is already the case with millions of computers, including very easily stolen laptops. Furthermore, they ignore the fact that a closed system such as the iPhone requires human vetting before the program is released to the public; this allows infinitely superior security features, as human quality control will be superior to the little or no quality control available on other devices. This drastically reduces the likelihood of keylogging programs, for example, which can appear on desktop machines and cause all sorts of problems. This is far less likely with an iPhone or similarly monitored software ecosystem.
Besides, all the AIB app would have to do to maintain account security is sign out every single time the phone is turned off and demand a password for every entry. The likelihood of a security failing is relatively slim.
Hopefully AIB will come to embrace mobile banking as thoroughly as its customers have. The system is more secure than they might imagine, and certainly far more convenient than waiting to get home to the computer, or typing a site into the phone. People want it, and as we all know, consumer demand is a pretty big deal.
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