Self-Service, ATM, and Other Channel Banking: Rising Use in a Mobile Era

Boston, MA –February 10, 2014 –Mercator Advisory Group’s fifth in a series of eight Insight Reports presenting findings of 2013 CustomerMonitor Survey Series reveals that while more consumers still prefer to use bank tellers to deposit checks, increasing numbers of U.S. adults prefer to use self-service methods for check deposit, primarily ATMs or their own mobile phones or computers. Responses from an expanded sample of 3,001 U.S. adults were collected in the annual online Banking and Channels survey, conducted in November 2013. The survey finds that preference for depositing at ATMs is increasing for both $50 checks. Consumers also increasingly prefer to use their mobile phones and computers to remote deposit capture $50 checks. This is especially true for smartphone and tablet owners, who are just as likely to prefer to deposit via ATMs or remote deposit capture as to prefer to use a teller to deposit $50 checks.

Self-Service, ATM, and Other Channel Banking: Rising Use in a Mobile Era, the latest report from Mercator Advisory Group’s Primary Data Service, highlights consumers’ rising use and interest in a wider variety of self-service and ATM channels, especially consumers who are most technically agile in using smartphones and tablets and mobile banking.

This study examines the demographic shift, changing preferences, and use of self-service channels compared to traditional branch banking and identifies trends in consumer methods of communicating with their bank and frequency of contact, methods, and preferences for getting cash and depositing checks; use of ATMs by type and location; willingness to pay surcharges for convenience; importance of ATM characteristics in new bank selection; interest in using mobile cash access, self-service kiosks, and videoconferencing for discussions with banking specialists and separately for conducting bank transactions.

“The proliferation of mobile channels appears to stimulate ATM and self-service use, not supplant it,” states Karen Augustine, manager of Primary Data Services including the CustomerMonitor Survey Series at Mercator Advisory Group and author of the report.

The report is 66 pages long and contains 28 exhibits

Members of Mercator Advisory Group CustomerMonitor Survey Series Service have access to this report as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access and other membership benefits.