Mobile banking: it's coming, but it's not here yet.

• Position: Marketing: News - Brief article

The use of mobile devices for banking is only starting to emerge, according to a new survey by Synergistics Research Corp., Atlanta, entitled, "Mobile Banking: The Consumer Viewpoint."

Providers face a number of market challenges that may impact the usage of mobile banking, such as varying technologies and platforms, device functionality and screen-size issues, pricing--particularly in the context of minute usage--as well as security.

The survey showed that users of mobile banking (cell phone of PDA/organizer) currently view this service as a secondary or emergency banking method. Slightly more than one-quarter of the cell phone users say this is their primary method of performing banking transactions, while more...