Mobile Banking Statistics 2026: Adoption Rates, App Usage, and Global Trends

Mobile banking is now the primary way 48.3% of US banked households reach their accounts, and 75% of UK adults use a banking app to manage day-to-day money. Worldwide, Juniper Research projects over 4.2 billion digital banking users by 2026, up from 2.5 billion in 2021, a 68% jump in five years that has reshaped how regulators, fraud teams, and retail banks measure customer engagement.

The picture below stitches together recent primary-source releases from the FDIC, Federal Reserve, UK Finance, the Financial Conduct Authority, the World Bank, GSMA, the American Bankers Association, and the largest US issuers, into side-by-side comparisons regulators rarely publish together.

Key Takeaways

• Mobile banking is the primary access method for 48.3% of US banked households, with use rising almost ninefold over the past decade.
• 75% of UK adults now use mobile banking, the most common account-access channel in 2024, according to UK Finance.
• 55% of US bank customers say mobile apps are their top way to manage accounts, the highest share since 2017.
• 64% of Generation Z and 68% of Millennials use mobile banking apps most often, per the American Bankers Association 2024 survey.
• US consumers averaged 11 payments per month with a mobile phone in 2024, nearly triple the 2018 figure.
• Two-thirds of UK digital banking fraud is now executed on mobile channels, up from 15% in 2020.
• Global mobile money processed approximately 108 billion transactions worth over $1.68 trillion in 2024, per GSMA.

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• Over 4.2 billion people are projected to use digital banking worldwide by 2026, or 53% of the global population.
• Bank of America served approximately 59 million verified digital users in Q1 2026, its highest reported total.
• More than 25 million Bank of America customers used Zelle in Q1 2026, sending 460 million transfers worth $147 billion.
• 2.1 billion mobile money accounts are now registered globally, with Africa holding 1.1 billion of them.
• 79% of adults worldwide hold an account at a bank, financial institution, or mobile money provider, per Global Findex 2025.
• Only 1.2 million UK adults are now digitally excluded from online or mobile banking, down from 6.9 million in 2017.
• 6% of US adults were unbanked in 2024, with 22% of those earning under $25,000 outside the banking system.

Global Mobile Banking Adoption

• Digital banking will reach over 4.2 billion users worldwide in 2026, 53% of the global population, Juniper Research forecasts.
• The user base grew from 2.5 billion in 2021, a five-year gain of 1.7 billion people.
• China is expected to account for approximately 25% of global digital banking users by 2026, the largest single market.
• 79% of adults globally have an account at a bank, financial institution, or mobile money provider, per the World Bank Global Findex 2025.
• 67% of adults worldwide had access to digital payments in 2024, the Findex study found.
• 86% of adults worldwide own a mobile phone, a precondition for app-based banking.
• The 1.7 billion-user gain between 2021 and 2026 represents a 68% rise in the global digital banking population. 2024 digital-payment access reaches 67% of adults worldwide.

Source: Juniper Research 2024, World Bank Global Findex 2025

The spread between Juniper’s 53% digital banking projection and Findex’s 67% digital-payment access tells the story: payment rails reach further than full bank-account relationships, especially in markets where mobile money fills the gap.

US Mobile Banking Adoption

• Mobile banking is the primary access method for 48.3% of US banked households in 2023, the FDIC reports.
• Mobile banking’s role as the primary channel grew almost ninefold over the past decade.
• Bank teller use as a primary access method fell more than half over the same period.
• Online banking on a desktop or laptop declined more than one-third as the primary access method.
• 55% of US bank customers prefer mobile apps for managing accounts, the highest share since the ABA-Morning Consult survey began in 2017.
• 22% of US bank customers say online banking on a laptop or PC is their preferred channel.
• Branch visits are now the preferred method for 8% of US customers, ATMs for 5%, and phone for 4%.
• 96% of US consumers rate their bank’s online and mobile app experience as excellent, very good, or good.
• 6% of US adults remained unbanked in 2024 per the Federal Reserve, with 22% of those earning under $25,000 outside the system.

By the numbers: Per the FDIC’s 2023 survey, 48.3% of US banked households now use a mobile app as their primary way to reach their accounts. A decade earlier the figure sat near 5%, and teller traffic has been cut in half over the same window, the steepest channel shift the FDIC has recorded since it began tracking access methods.

Mobile is the channel a majority of customers actively prefer, and the high satisfaction figure suggests the shift is sticking because the experience is acceptable.

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Recent Developments

• May 2025: The Federal Reserve released its 2024 Economic Well-Being of US Households report, finding 6% of adults unbanked and 11% paying at least one overdraft fee in the prior 12 months.
• June 2025: The Federal Reserve Financial Services released the 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, reporting 11 monthly mobile-phone payments per consumer in 2024, up from 4 in 2018.
• April 2026: Bank of America reported approximately 59 million verified digital users and $147 billion in Q1 2026 Zelle transfers in its first-quarter earnings release.
• April 2025: GSMA published its State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money for 2024, confirming 2.1 billion registered accounts and over $1.68 trillion in transaction value.
• November 2024: The FDIC released the 2023 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, recording the lowest unbanked rate since tracking began in 2009.
• May 2025: The FCA published Financial Lives 2024 selected findings, showing only 1.2 million UK adults remain digitally excluded.

UK Mobile Banking Adoption

• 75% of UK adults now use mobile banking, the most common account-access channel in 2024, per UK Finance.
• More than half (57%) of UK adults now use mobile wallets in 2024.
• Cash slipped to under 10% of all UK payments for the first time on record in 2024.
• Buy Now Pay Later rose from 14% to 25% of UK adults in a single year.
• Approximately 88% of UK adults used online or mobile banking services in 2022, up from 77% in 2017, per the FCA Financial Lives data.
• Only 1.2 million UK adults are now digitally excluded, down sharply from 6.9 million in 2017.
• 14% of UK adults held a current account with a digital bank in 2024, compared with 11% in 2022 and under 0.5% in 2017.

The FCA’s digitally-excluded count is the more striking number. A fall from 6.9 million in 2017 to 1.2 million in 2024 is an 83% drop, and almost every percentage point of that decline is mobile-app adoption among older adults, the cohort the FCA had previously flagged as the hardest to reach.

Mobile Banking by Generation

• 64% of Generation Z customers use mobile banking apps most often.
• 68% of Millennials use mobile banking apps most often.
• More than half of Generation X (55%) use mobile apps as their primary banking channel.
• Adults aged 18 to 24 use mobile phones for 45% of all their payments.
• 13% of US young adults aged 18 to 29 were unbanked in 2024, per the Federal Reserve.
• Younger UK adults are more likely than older cohorts to hold a current account with a digital bank.

Worth noting: The Federal Reserve’s 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice records 18- to 24-year-olds making 45% of their payments via mobile phone in 2024. That figure includes contactless taps, peer-to-peer transfers, and in-app card use across the under-25 cohort.

Both surveys point in the same direction even though they measure different behaviours. The under-30 cohort is now mobile-default, and any servicing flow that still routes them to desktop will under-perform.

Mobile Banking at Major US Banks

• Bank of America served approximately 59 million verified digital users in Q1 2026, up from prior reported levels.
• 71% of Bank of America Consumer Banking sales were conducted digitally in Q1 2026.
• Bank of America’s Zelle network handled 460 million transactions worth $147 billion in Q1 2026, up 11% in volume and 13% in value year over year.
• 25 million customers used Zelle through Bank of America in Q1 2026, up 5% year over year.
• Bank of America’s Life Plan digital tool has been used by more than 20 million clients since launch in 2020.

Source: Bank of America Q1 2026 earnings release, April 2026

Bank of America’s Zelle disclosure is the cleanest single read on mobile banking utility at scale: usage is growing faster than the user base, the metric to watch across the top US issuers.

Mobile Money in Africa and Asia

• Mobile money crossed 2.1 billion registered accounts globally in 2024, per GSMA.
• More than half a billion users were monthly active on mobile money platforms during 2024.
• Approximately 108 billion mobile money transactions worth over $1.68 trillion were processed in 2024.
• Africa held 1.1 billion mobile money accounts in 2024, 53% of the global total.
• Africa processed 65% of global mobile money transaction value last year, equal to $1.1 trillion.
• East Africa held 459 million accounts and processed $649 billion in transactions.
• West Africa held 485 million accounts and processed $357 billion in transactions.
• Central Africa held 104 million accounts and processed $83 billion in transactions.

Source: GSMA State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2024

Key finding: Per GSMA, mobile money platforms processed over $1.68 trillion in 2024 across approximately 108 billion transactions, with Africa holding 53% of accounts and 65% of transaction value. The continent leads on per-account engagement intensity, not only on raw account count.

Mobile money is the entry-point banking experience for hundreds of millions of customers who never had a high-street relationship, and that has implications for the SQ Magazine technology beat too: the machine learning systems banks deploy for fraud detection in mature markets are increasingly being adapted for transaction-rich, identity-thin mobile money rails, especially in East Africa.

Mobile Banking Fraud and Security

• Criminals stole over £1.17 billion through UK fraud in 2024, broadly unchanged from 2023, per UK Finance.
• The UK recorded 3.31 million fraud cases in 2024, a 12% increase year over year.
• Two-thirds of UK digital banking fraud is now executed on mobile channels, up from 15% in 2020.
• Mobile accounts for roughly one-third of money lost to fraud in the UK, even though it hosts two-thirds of digital-banking fraud cases.
• Banks prevented £1.45 billion of unauthorised fraud in 2024 through detection and authentication systems.
• Remote banking losses fell 7% in 2024, with cases dropping 17%.
• Authorised push payment fraud losses fell 2% to £450.7 million, with cases down 20% to under 186,000.

Source: UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2025

The asymmetric channel split is the most useful fraud read for product teams. Mobile-channel attacks are higher in volume and lower in average value, consistent with social-engineering scams. For broader context on attack patterns affecting financial services, see the SQ Magazine cybercrime dataset and the cybersecurity statistics pillar that tracks attack-vector frequency.

Mobile Wallet and Contactless Usage

• More than half (57%) of UK adults use a mobile wallet in 2024.
• Cash fell to under 10% of UK payments for the first time on record in 2024.
• Faster Payments is now the second most-used payment method in the UK.
• US consumers averaged 48 payments per month in 2024, continuing an upward trend that began in 2021.
• Cash accounted for 14% of US payments in 2024, with consumers averaging 7 cash payments per month.
• About 23% of US purchases and peer-to-peer payments were conducted remotely in 2024.

Source: Federal Reserve 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice

The takeaway: The Federal Reserve’s 2025 Diary shows US consumers making 48 payments per month in 2024, with mobile phones used for 11 of them; credit cards account for 35% and debit cards 30% of payments. Mobile is now the rails most of those cards run on through Apple Pay, Google Pay, and bank app tap-to-pay.

Mobile Payment Volume in the US

• US consumers averaged 11 payments per month with a mobile phone in 2024, almost triple the 4 logged in 2018.
• Adults aged 18 to 24 use mobile phones for 45% of all payments.
• US consumers made an average of 48 payments per month across all methods in 2024.
• Credit cards accounted for 35% of US payments, debit cards 30%, and cash 14% in 2024.
• About 23% of US purchases and peer-to-peer payments were conducted remotely in 2024.
• Nearly 80% of US consumers held cash for at least one day per month across 2018-2024.

Source: Federal Reserve 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice

The mobile payment trajectory is one of the cleaner growth curves in retail banking data, and card networks, not bank apps, are the primary beneficiaries because most mobile payments settle to a Visa or Mastercard credential.

How Mobile Banking Compares to Traditional Banking

• Mobile banking is the primary access channel for 48.3% of US banked households, with online banking use as the primary channel having declined more than one-third over the past decade.
• 55% of US bank customers prefer mobile apps versus 8% preferring branches and 5% preferring ATMs.
• In the UK, mobile banking (75% of adults) is the most common access channel.
• 6% of US adults are unbanked entirely per the Federal Reserve, meaning the traditional plus digital banking system reaches the remaining majority of adults.
• Digital bank current accounts reached 14% of UK adults in 2024, with high-street incumbents still dominant overall.

Source: American Bankers Association 2024 Consumer Survey; FDIC 2023 National Survey; UK Finance Payment Markets Report 2024; FCA Financial Lives 2024

The US/UK side-by-side reads as a single story told with two different measurement systems. In both markets, mobile is the default channel and digital-only banks remain a low-teens share of accounts.

For broader context on app-economy mechanics that affect this, the e-commerce platform statistics cover the merchant side where mobile wallet payments settle.

The role of generative AI in banking app personalisation is one of the faster-growing investment lines we cover separately.

What percentage of people use mobile banking?

Per the 2023 FDIC National Survey, 48.3% of US banked households use mobile banking as their primary way to reach their accounts, and the ABA finds 55% of US bank customers prefer mobile apps for managing accounts. In the UK, UK Finance puts mobile banking usage at 75% of adults in 2024. Globally, Juniper Research projects over 4.2 billion digital banking users, about 53% of the world’s population, by 2026, up from 2.5 billion in 2021.

What are the pros and cons of mobile banking?

The largest single benefit, measured directly, is convenience: US consumers now average 11 mobile payments per month, up from 4 in 2018, and 96% of consumers rate their bank’s mobile and online experience as excellent, very good, or good.

The highest measured cost is fraud channel-shift: two-thirds of UK digital banking fraud now runs through the mobile channel, up from 15% in 2020, although mobile still accounts for only about one-third of money lost. The trade-off is asymmetric: mobile produces more case volume but smaller per-case losses.

Conclusion

Mobile banking is no longer a channel; it is the channel. 48.3% of US banked households use it as their primary route into their money, 75% of UK adults use it as their main account-access method, and over 4.2 billion people will use digital banking globally by 2026. UK mobile-channel fraud cases have risen from 15% to two-thirds of digital banking fraud in four years, and Bank of America’s Q1 2026 Zelle volume rose 11% in transactions and 13% in value year over year.

The next reporting cycle will test whether digital-only banks scale beyond their current low-teens share of UK current accounts and whether US fraud teams see the UK channel-shift pattern repeat at scale.