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British Bankers Association (BBA) says digital banking is in a “consumer-led revolution”. Its latest report – Way We Bank Now – shows a drastic increase in consumers using digital channels to manage their money – reports Banking Technology.

Changing customer habits and major technological advances in banking have resulted in the following:

• Customers are using mobile banking apps more than 7,610 times a minute;

• Payments using mobile apps in 2015 were 347 million, up 54% or 122 million from the year before;

• Payments using internet banking were 417 million last year, a 2% increase or nine million from 2014;

• The annual use of contactless cards has risen 250%, with £1.1 billion spent in March 2016;

• Banks issued 15 million cards with contactless technology in 2015, up 54% on the year before;

• More than 13.8 million apps were downloaded in 2015 – a 25% rise on 2014.

“By far the biggest rise in digital services is the use of mobile apps, which the report puts down to the speed in which people can access their information and make transactions,” the report states.

Mobile banking apps are now increasingly preferred to banks’ websites, BBA says. Internet banking logins fell slightly last year – from 4.4 million a day in 2014 to 4.3 million in 2015.

Meanwhile, the usage of mobile device apps grew from seven million a day in 2014 to 11 million in 2015.

“We are in the midst of a consumer-led revolution in the way we do our day-to-day banking,” states Anthony Browne, CEO of BBA. “Customers love the new technology that is allowing us to bank round the clock. The choice now on offer from banks has put customers firmly in the driving seat on the way we bank.”

“It’s a challenging but truly transformational time for banking,” adds Robert Cubbage, UK banking and capital markets leader at EY (which supported the production of the Way We Bank Now report).

What about the “brick and mortar”?

According to the report, the number of visits to bank branches has fallen, from 476 million in 2011 to 278 million in 2016.

This is expected to continue for the next five years, with 185 million visits in 2021, the report predicts.

Average visits per branch a day have decreased from 104 in 2011 to 71 in 2016 (and are expected to fall to 51 by 2021).

The average visits to a branch per customer per year has also declined: from 13.7 in 2011 to 8.1 in 2016. The forecast is that this figure will drop to 5.3 in 2021.

However, the number of overall customer interactions with their bank – across all digital and physical channels – has risen since 2011 and is expected to rise into 2021, from 2.3 times a month to 6.3 times respectively.