The Western region of the U.S. is home
Umpqua
Fingerprint login is not yet ubiquitous in bank apps, but some Western institutions have already moved into other forms of biometric authentication. Montana's First Interstate offers eyeprint ID, for example. Colorado-based FirstBank updated its app in November to support face ID login for the iPhone X, wanting customers to have that capability as soon as they got their new phones. FirstBank continues to look at different biometric options and at how artificial intelligence and machine learning can help make the authentication process as seamless as possible. Beyond providing a better customer experience, reliable biometric authentication can prevent the kind of security headaches that arise when people store hard-to-remember user IDs and passwords unsafely.
FirstBank
First Interstate's mobile offering received some upgrade within the last few weeks, with the addition of a quick balance feature, which allows customers to check basic account information on the app launch screen without logging in. This is a popular feature with mobile banking users, according to our survey results, but it is still relatively rare among the Western banks whose apps we researched.
First Interstate also recently added an Apple Watch app, which
Cardless ATMs
S&P Global Market Intelligence researched regional and community bank apps in autumn 2017 for our recently published 2017 U.S. Mobile Banking Landscape. This article focuses on the Western region, including the Mountain and Pacific census divisions. The charts below reflect updates through Dec. 11.
Click here to read the full 2017 U.S. Mobile Banking Landscape. Click here for an article focused on mobile banking in the Midwest and here for an article about the South.
Methodology
The 2017 mobile banking survey was fielded online between Jan. 26 and Feb. 1 across a nationwide random sample of 4,000 U.S. mobile bank app users 18 years and older. Results have a margin of error of +/- 1.6% at the 95% confidence level based on the sample size of 4,000.
S&P Global Market Intelligence researched mobile apps in June 2017 for more than two dozen financial institutions, including the biggest retail banking franchises in the U.S. and various large regional and branchless banks. Between Sept. 18 and Nov. 10, S&P Global Market Intelligence researched mobile apps for 45 smaller regional players and large community banks. The latter analysis focused, for the most part, on the top five retail deposit market share leaders with under $50 billion in assets in each of the nine U.S. census divisions. This research is based on product descriptions available on bank websites and in app stores, as well as company-provided information. Some companies may offer additional features and services. Our analysis does not necessarily reflect functionality or services available through text banking, mobile browsers or secure messaging.
