A Gartner survey of almost 4000 consumers in the UK and the US shows that online banking take-up continues to grow across income and ages, with 47% of US and 30% of UK adults using the Internet channel in the previous month.
"Over the past several years, online banking has been seen as a way of appealing to more affluent and younger clients," says David Schehr, research director at Gartner. "However, what is becoming clear is that the overall level of consumer Internet use and the increasingly narrow segment of non-users - particularly in the US - are shifting the dynamics of who is using online banking and what they seek from it."
The most-frequently cited reasons for not using online banking were channel-related, that is, simply preferring to use other channels, for 61% of US non-users and 58% of UK non-users. Forty-one percent in the US and 38 percent in the UK cited security fears as the main reason for keeping their finances offline.
Inertia also appears to play a role, with a quarter of US refuseniks and 31% of UK non-users offering no single deciding factor in their decision not to bank online.
"Compared with younger consumers, preboomers, who are 63 or older, are more explicit in their reasons for not using online banking - they are comfortable with other channels, such as the branch, and they are worried about the security of online banking," says Gartner's Schehr. "In a way, this creates a great opportunity to convert these nonusers to users, since the causes of their concerns can be more directly confronted and addressed."