Aurélie L'HostisThis is a guest post from Aurélie L’Hostis, a researcher serving eBusiness & Channel Strategy professionals.

In a world that’s constantly on the move, more and more Europeans appreciate that the phone in their pocket can do more than just cruise the Internet, check the weather forecast, and shoot disgruntled birds into space. For mobile banking now offers a secure and convenient way for customers to do their banking … all in the palm of their hand.

As mobile banking adoption maintains its steady growth in Europe, customer expectations for functionality within mobile banking apps continue to increase. Customers now want quick access to their accounts 24/7, the ability to perform a range of transactions with only a few clicks, and a way to manage their money directly on their smartphone. Over the past year, European banks have focused on trying to keep up with the demands of these increasingly sophisticated mobile banking users. The result has been a plethora of improved functionalities and exciting innovations in European mobile banking. We used our Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark methodology to evaluate the retail mobile banking offerings of eleven European retail banks from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, and Turkey. Here are some of the highlights:

–          Banks like BNP Paribas, Postbank, and Société Générale are offering extensive digital money management within their smartphone apps. Garanti’s app automatically categorizes spending and uses this and any scheduled payments to show customers how much money they have left until the end of the month.

–          Banks are making it easy to transfer money. Postbank has been particularly innovative in this area, letting customers transfer money via voice commands.

–          Banks are letting customers research and buy products. We believe that growing numbers of mobile banking users are interested in at least initiating product applications from within mobile banking, and that some will complete the process via mobile. Millennium, mBank, la Caixa, and Garanti all let customers apply for financial products via their smartphone apps.

Forrester clients can read our full 2014 European Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark report here.