The future of the banking industry: "Mobile only Banking in Switzerland"

Abstract

Nowadays, in the so called “technological era” smartphones have evolved and offer their users a series of new possibilities in all fields of information exchange and various different services used by applications to enhance their functionalities. Moving towards the future, mobile banking becomes much more than a banking channel. It becomes a banking channel that offers a new way of accessing financial services via mobile devices allowing a completely new dimension of bank and customer interaction. This new dimension is being influenced by mobile-only banks, which are a new type of banks designed to offer financial transactions such as balance inquiries, transactions histories, payments and money transfers through a smartphone enabling users to access so far only branch oriented services, using their smartphones at anytime from anywhere. The popularity of local branch banking has declined due to younger customers opting for the increasing convenience of banking services through their smartphones. This new generation called Generation Z will comprise 32 percent of the global population of 7.7 billion in 2019. Therefore, the upcoming research within this master thesis will try to identify the disruptive thread in regards to Swiss banks and smartphone banks available for the Swiss market, as well as to address the demand of Generation Z for mobile-only banking model—a global trend offered by smartphone banks and its potential influence on the future of banking in Switzerland.