As most of the major South African banks now have cell phone and mobile banking offerings in the market, the question is: What kind of uptake can be expected from the SA public?

At the recent BMI-Techknowledge African Banking Forum, analyst Tertia Smit said that, while a large opportunity exists with new technologies being introduced and legislation such as the Dedicated Banking Bill, ultimately the consumer has to be convinced to use mobile banking.

?Currently,? she says, ?we see around 8 percent usage of mobile banking services. And the majority of this is for smaller transactions, such as balance enquiries or mini statements, rather than transfers and payments.?

BMI-T attributes the slow rate of adoption by SA consumers to concerns about security, client awareness and complexity, regardless of what the banks are saying in their marketing campaigns.

When FNB recently launched its SMS-based mobile banking platform, the bank said that the expansion in applications on a cell phone indicates that cell phone users want more out of their cell phones, and using it as a banking channel was logical.

Also, while a far cry from mobile banking services, FNB said that the growth in its inContact SMS service was an indication that cell phone users considered their cell phones, to be more than communications devices. However, in SA, a majority of cell phone users are still only using their cell phones, for calls and SMSs.

Referring to overseas trends, Smit says: ?The good news, however, is that the cell phone is the new wallet.?

But its applications can be questioned, as was seen recently, when SimPay announced that it was to halt its mobile commerce operation, only 18 months after its inception.

SimPay?s idea was to allow European users to charge transactions of less than ?10 (US$12) to their cell phone, but Forrester Research said that the business transaction volume was just not there. Mobile payment providers need to introduce a technology that is built on established habits, Smit says.

According to BMI-T, a large percentage of the banked population still trust traditional banking channels, with the ATM at number one on the list of channels, branch banking at number two, and Internet gaining ground at number three.

?Only a small percentage of consumers will even consider mobile banking for now because of a lack of awareness or a strong motivator. While banks would disagree, the perception at user level is that mobile banking is expensive and not secure,? says Smit.

All of the SA banks (and companies) that have rolled out mobile banking and payment systems have said from the word go that they need to foster trust in the technology at end-user level before the demand will grow, but time will tell, as was the case with Internet banking.