What mobile banking users are actually doing – and how much realmoney they are moving – now is starting to come into focus as moreplayers in the field hike their kimonos, at least a bit.

A big data dump from Malauzai,the Austin, Texas, mobile banking apps developer with ties toCatalyst Corporate, has offered many – sometimes surprising –insights into what is happening in the mobile channel.

Case in point: “Apple users have bigger accounts and their moneymovements are substantially bigger than those by Android users,”said Robb Gaynor, a Malauzai co-founder, in an interview. “Appledevice users continue to move money via the mobile channel at over100% higher levels than their counterparts on the Androidplatform.”

Why? What can explain that? Gaynor shrugged. Malauzai'sanalytics – based on data from 50 banks and credit unions, with375,000 distinct logins for 50,000 registered mobile banking users– are rooted in numbers and the numbers go only so far.

mFoundry CEO Drew Sievers, meantime, asked what he made of that difference,indicated that Apple users are more apps focused. Android usersoften access banking on their smartphones via the mobile web andthey would not be tracked by Malauzai, which acknowledges its datatracks only activity within its apps. So this Malauzai metricmay be only so meaningful.

More reliable meaning is found in Malauzai's Mobile EngagementIndex, which is a function of average logins, session duration,feature utilization and enrollment levels. For September –the most recent month for which data are available – MEI is up2.87, said Gaynor, and that is calculated against the AugustMEI.

Go back as far as April and the September MEI is up 12.46. Month after month it nudges up – “but we are still at the beginningof this process,” said Gaynor.

The other chief Malauzai metric is its Mobile Money Index, whereMMI is calculated by reviewing average transaction counts per enduser and the overall dollar value of money movements.

In April MMI stood at 236.03. In September it had vaultedup to 339.40. The clear trend, going back months, is for more moneyto move through mobile channels, admittedly an unsurprisingfinding.

But Gaynor had yet more show stoppers to share.

A surprise: Credit unions are experiencing stronger mobileadoption – and more member usage – than are their bankcounterparts, said Gaynor, whose company has mobilized both kindsof institutions. “This is not about just one creditunion. It's all of them. And it is staying true overtime.”

Gaynor also indicated that when an institution rolls out mobilebanking it will, on average, see 10% of its members enrolled insidethe first 90 days. “Then it grows 2 to 3% every month,” saidGaynor. Note: this data point usually is expressed as apercentage of online banking users. Malauzai is instead usingthe bigger number of all accounts so its numbers might seem lowerthan the numbers often reported.

Another shocker: almost three times more members are usingmobile remote deposit capture than are using mobile bill pay,according to Malauzai, which said 15% use mobile RDC versus 4.2%who use mobile bill pay.

Sievers, by the way, commented that held true for mFoundry aswell – that is, mobile RDC wins many more users – but he noted thatthere are plenty of ways to pay bills (via online banking, forinstance) whereas mobile RDC is something of a unique solution.

More quick stats from Malauzai:

* Average mobile user logs in 12.2 per month

* Average session duration – 1 minute, 32 seconds

* 25% do something beyond balance, or history search. 75% onlydo those two activities

* Once registered, 75% remain active mobile banking users after90 days.

Incidentally, when next you attempt to log into mobile bankingand you fail, know you have company. Malauzai said that asmany as 15% of log ins fail – “fat fingering,” said Gaynor whoadded that the overwhelming majority successfully logged in on asecond attempt.