In an earlier post, I provided some of the top-line findings from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors' recently released Consumers and Mobile Financial Services 2016 report. Safety and risk continue to be cited by consumers as significant barriers to their adoption of mobile banking and other new payment technology. Many consumers either don't believe that the mobile banking channel is safe or they don't understand the security features that are part of the mobile technology. The research effort probed these issues in greater detail to better understand consumer perspectives.

One of the first questions in this area asked how safe a person's personal information is when using mobile banking. As the table shows, while there has been steady positive movement over the last three years in getting many consumers to feel their personal information is safe, there remains a great challenge. A decrease of only two percentage points (42 percent in 2015 compared to a high of 44 percent in 2014) in those who believe their personal information is "somewhat unsafe" or "very unsafe" doesn't signify much advancement in the safety education efforts for these folks.

Q. How safe do you believe people's personal information is when they use mobile banking?

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In a separate survey question, a slightly higher percentage of respondents (46 percent) believed that their personal information was "very unsafe" or "somewhat unsafe" when conducting a mobile point-of-service transaction at a store.

With 15 percent of the respondents indicating they "don't know," the survey illustrates the need for additional education about the security aspects of mobile banking and payment technology. The research showed that among those with mobile phones and bank accounts, mobile banking users had more confidence in the security of mobile banking transactions than non-users. Only 3 percent of mobile banking users thought that their personal information was "very unsafe" when they use mobile banking, compared to 28 percent for non-users.

When mobile phone users were probed about their specific security concerns about using their mobile phone for banking or payments, their most common response was that they were concerned about all of the listed security risks. For those who chose one specific reason, they most frequently cited fears about the phone being hacked or the data being intercepted, followed by concerns about their phone being lost or stolen.

On a positive note, consumers appear to be adopting more secure mobile phone practices. The percentage of smartphone users who password-protect their phone increased to 70 percent in 2015 from 61 percent in 2013. One-third of the smartphone owners were using antimalware software or applications to protect their phone, and a similar share used an app or service to help them locate, remotely access, erase, or disable their phone in the event it is lost or stolen.

Additionally, consumers are recognizing the need for improved authentication with their banking service provider. Seventy-four percent of smartphone owners indicated they either "strongly agree" or "agree" that they would be willing to undergo additional authentication steps when they were logging in to their mobile banking service.

Other important findings are contained in the research report, so be sure to give it a good read.

Photo of David Lott By David Lott, a payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed