OXFORD, United Kingdom—Despite the marketing hype, fewer than 200,000 of the 1 million U.K. online banking customers are using a WAP cell phone to access their accounts, according to new marketing research from Forrester. The firm points to bungled marketing and poor analysis that has also been reinforced by inefficient and unreliable technology.
While the banks have been accused of poor Internet sites to support WAP access, Forrester claims that WAP standardization has come too late and the new extensions within WAP 2.0—the latest standard for the technology that supports cascading style sheets, WAP push and multimedia messaging—will not become available until sometime next year.
While most new cell phones now include WAP functionality, only a small minority of consumers are said to be active users of WAP-based services. Forrester has issued a warning to the banking community that, unless they transform their m-banking services by offering simple voice-activated help, location-based services and actionable alerts, then the existing number of users will decline.
