Business mobile has failed. We can try to sugarcoat the message,but reality is reality: It is less than perfect. To begin with,financial institutions have failed to deliver stand-alone,purpose-built apps for businesses. There are few business mobilestand-alone apps in the App Store and Google Play. Approximately400 institutions have launched a business-specific mobile app. Thatcompares to more than 6,000 consumer mobile banking apps. Whenoffered the option by a credit union or bank, only 10% of activebusiness end-users are choosing to access their accounts via amobile device. This again is far short of the consumer numbers,where 40% of usage takes place via mobile devices.

In contrast to the mobile device, when we look at digitalbanking usage in a more general sense, we know businesses use the digital channelfrequently, but the data tells us the business user stays onthe desktop. Business users access digital banking four times aweek and stay online for almost seven minutes per session, which is300% longer than the time period consumers stay online. But thebusiness users don't use their mobile phones – they stay on thedesktop. They have access to mobile apps and mobile websites, andthey do not use them.

And it makes sense. Most businesses will not even let employeesuse their personal mobile phones for anything work-related, muchless for installing an app to make a wire transfer. If you owned abusiness, would you want that data installed on an employee'sphone, where it could get lost or be abused? No. Then why are wesurprised to hear no one uses their mobile phone to conductbusiness banking?

Why is it that we are surprised when we look at the data and seeless than 10% of business employees who access the digital channeluse a mobile device? Ninety percent of the use takes place on thedesktop. The average session duration on a mobile device is 30% ofthe session length on a desktop and lasts just over two minutes.And mobile transactions are lower in both volume and value. Lessthan 7% of ACH originations are completed from a mobile device andmobile wires are basically nonexistent – less than 1% of wiresoriginate from a mobile device.

The iPhone pretty much exclusively owns the smartphone spacewhen it comes to businesses; there are very few Android users –less than 1% of business mobile usage originates from an Androiddevice. The iPad does better at about double the business bankingusage through smartphones, but it's still well below desktopbusiness digital. Overall, the usage is low and the desktop rulesbusiness digital. The data doesn't lie. Mobilebusiness banking has failed. But is it the fault of the chicken orthe egg? Very few financial institutions have launchedpurpose-built stand-alone apps for business consumers – as statedabove, about 400, which is a very low number. And with less than10% of business users opting for mobile, we can call it a clearfailure, but is that because there is a lack of usefulness anddemand, or because the apps have failed to excite businesses andfinancial institutions in terms of their features and functions?Will businesses ever flock to mobile? Can we overcome basic facts,like the fact that business owners don't want their employees to havethe banking app on their personal phones? And, as business owners shift toward the youngergenerations, might mobile banking become important? Do currentbusiness owners, who generally lean toward older generations, careenough to embrace mobile?

What we do know is businesses are slow to embrace mobile in avery general sense. Less than 10% of businesses with websites havea native app in the App Store, according to Malauzai ResearchInstitute 2016 data. Maybe their lack of mobile banking use isinfluenced by the fact that the typical business – and there are 26million of them in the United States – just doesn't care aboutmobile. That said, maybe not. The most successful mobile paymentsapp comes from a business: Starbucks. Not Apple Pay or Venmo, butStarbucks, a business that publishes its own app and is profoundlychanging how it takes payments (more than 20% of Starbucks'payments come through the app). And more businesses are followingsuit. WalmartPay has experienced serious growth in the past fewquarters, and others such as CVS and Target are jumping in withtheir own payment-oriented apps. Who knows, maybe payments can be adriver for business mobile.

Today, businesses are not using the mobile channel. It is not somuch a failure of the businesses or marketing, but more of afundamental failure of solving important problems for businessesvia mobile. Mobile simply does not solve big issues for businesses.Business mobile and business digital in general can and will bevery successful. The value proposition is there, it's just notfully materialized.

Adding a payments function might help (thank you Starbucks forleading the way). Whatever the driver may be, this initial “mobilefailure” for businesses can now be countered with “mobileinnovation,” and in the end, businesses will benefit. And then wecan celebrate business mobile success!

Robb Gaynor is the Chief Product Officerat Malauzai. He can be contacted at 512-961-5699or [email protected].