• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, June 16, 2015

Mobile banking is soaring in the United Kingdom, where the number of customer interactions with banks via mobile passed the number of desktop interactions and visits to physical branches over the last year. That makes mobile the dominant channel for consumer banking activity in one of the world’s financial hubs.

As of late March, British bank customers were interacting with their bank accounts via mobile 73.8 million times per week, a fourfold increase over 18.6 million times per week a year before, according to the British Bankers’ Association. By contrast, British bank customers were interacting with their bank accounts via desktop Internet 66.9 million times per week in March, a more modest 10% increase from the year before.

Turning to good old-fashioned human interaction, Brits visited bank branches a mere 427 million times in all of 2014, which works out to 8.2 million visits per week, down 6% from 2013.

British bank customers had downloaded a total 22.9 million mobile banking apps in March 2015, up from a total 14.7 million in March 2014. Another two million Brits signed up for Paym, a mobile payments service. Meanwhile British banks including Nationwide and Barclays are experimenting with wearable devices such as wristbands that can be pre-loaded with cash and used for mobile payments.

Looking ahead, the BBA expects that mobile banking will account for a larger share of banking than Internet, telephone, and branch banking combined by 2020 (I would expect this will happen a lot sooner, considering that mobile is already even with Internet and branch banking combined).