What mobile banking users are actually doing – and how much real money they are moving – now is starting to come into focus as more players 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 to Catalyst 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 money movements are substantially bigger than those by Android users,” said Robb Gaynor, a Malauzai co-founder, in an interview. “Apple device users continue to move money via the mobile channel at over 100% higher levels than their counterparts on the Android platform.”

Why? What can explain that? Gaynor shrugged. Malauzai's analytics – based on data from 50 banks and credit unions, with 375,000 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 users often access banking on their smartphones via the mobile web and they would not be tracked by Malauzai, which acknowledges its data tracks only activity within its apps. So this Malauzai metric may be only so meaningful.

More reliable meaning is found in Malauzai's Mobile Engagement Index, 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 up 2.87, said Gaynor, and that is calculated against the August MEI.

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 beginning of this process,” said Gaynor.

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

In April MMI stood at 236.03. In September it had vaulted up to 339.40. The clear trend, going back months, is for more money to move through mobile channels, admittedly an unsurprising finding.

But Gaynor had yet more show stoppers to share.

A surprise: Credit unions are experiencing stronger mobile adoption – and more member usage – than are their bank counterparts, said Gaynor, whose company has mobilized both kinds of institutions. “This is not about just one credit union. It's all of them. And it is staying true over time.”

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

Another shocker: almost three times more members are using mobile 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 as well – that is, mobile RDC wins many more users – but he noted that there are plenty of ways to pay bills (via online banking, for instance) 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% only do those two activities

* Once registered, 75% remain active mobile banking users after 90 days.

Incidentally, when next you attempt to log into mobile banking and you fail, know you have company. Malauzai said that as many as 15% of log ins fail – “fat fingering,” said Gaynor who added that the overwhelming majority successfully logged in on a second attempt.

Instant Insights /

Mobility Matters: Tracking the Mobile Banking Revolution in Credit Unions

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