Canada Now Has 3.5 Million Banking App Users, RBC Banking App Downloads Hit 1.35M

A new report from Solutions Research Group notes Canadians have been quick to jump onto mobile banking apps, thanks to the explosion of smartphone ownership in Canada, which now numbers over 10 million, as documented in The Globe and Mail.

We have numerous iPhone banking apps in Canada, with CIBC being one of the first banks to launch a fully powered app. Since the end of last year, CIBC notes 5 percent of bills were paid via mobile banking apps.

RBC shared some data from their mobile banking app, which has been downloaded 1.35 million times since the winter of 2010:

Sharad Ojha, head of mobile channel strategy for the Royal Bank of Canada, says mobile banking users account for about seven per cent of RBC’s client base.

“Since we launched our mobile banking application in December of 2010, we have seen about 1.35 million of our clients download it,” he says. “If you compare the adoption of mobile banking to any other channel, mobile is outpacing [them] by far.”

An RBC study conducted at the end of 2011 found that the majority of mobile users were between the age of 18 to 40, says Mr. Ojha, with two peaks at 22-24 and 35-40.

It’s not hard to see why Canadians have been quick to latch on to mobile banking. Apps are incredibly easy to use and secure, plus you can do banking from virtually anywhere in less time than it takes to login to online banking on your computer.

We last heard about Canada’s ‘Big 3’ carriers in negotiations to launch a ‘mobile wallet’ in six months, and also the Royal Canadian Mint’s contest open to developers to take advantage of their ‘MintChip’ technology.

Do you use an iPhone banking app to do your banking? Which one?

[via The Globe and Mail]