In online banking, there are no obvious battles of the sexes brewing. In fact, men and women share similar online banking awareness appetites, according to our upcoming issue of Bank Innovation Monitor.
Take awareness of “pay bills” through the internet: 81.3% of men said they were aware their financial institutions offered the service, while 82.4% of females reported the same knowledge. Those are pretty close statistics, and the awareness commonality between the sexes didn’t end there. Our data also showed that “live chat, text or email with an agent or service rep,” “apply for a credit card” and “receive text or email alerts regarding your account” only exhibited the slightest traces of a gender awareness divide. To us, the fact that men and women report similar knowledge of several banking channel’s services that we queried suggests that online banking has more than achieved mainstream status with Americans — with a little exception.
Despite the similar online banking familiarity, there were some gender nuances gleaned from our upcoming Monitor issue. Below are three gender trends we discovered:
- The largest gender divide was found in awareness of buying “something with virtual currency or credit” online feature. Indeed, 13.8% of men said they were aware of this service, which compares to only 4.7% of females reporting the same thing. With virtual currency somewhat of a novelty to date, the awareness difference suggests that men are embracing newer technology trends faster than females. With time, we believe women’s awareness levels of newer technology will keep pace with men.
- More females than males were aware they could apply for a loan or mortgage online: 45.5% of females said they knew of the feature, compared to 40.7% of men. Women also had a greater knowledge than men about “transfer funds between accounts” and the “research a financial product or service” feature.
- More men than females knew that their financial institutions offered the ability to “top up your prepaid card” online: 8.9% of men said they were aware of the service, which was in contrast to 4.3% of females reporting the same thing.
Bank Innovation Monitor is a quarterly data and research service published by Bank Innovation that delves deeply in usage and want by consumers of the critical channels of banking innovation: online banking, mobile banking and alternative payments.