Gartner: 25% of Top 50 Banks Will Deploy App Store By 2016

Bank apps are becoming more difficult for customers to find in crowded app stores and poorly organized bank websites, Gartner said.

The sharp growth of apps in consumer mobile app stores is causing some problems for banks, Gartner said in new research released yesterday. With more apps flooding the app stores, customers are having a harder to find their banks’ legitimate apps (which also creates opportunities for criminals with malicious apps masquerading as legitimate ones).

Banks are also facing a parallel challenge online, where the increase in banking apps is making it harder for customers to find the app they’re looking for, Gartner said. Bank websites tend to be difficult to navigate, as they are usually broken down according to line of business, and rarely have a centralized list of all the bank’s apps.

The solution to this app visibility issue could be for banks to offer their own app stores, Kristen Moyer, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement accompanying the release of the study.

[For More On Mobile: Banks Falling Behind Pace of Innovation in Mobile Apps]

Smaller banks that tend to have only one mobile app can probably continue to operate under the current model of standard website and an app deployed to third-party app stores. But banks that have deployed several apps and have public web API’s deployed to customers, employees and third-party entities, which multiplies the total number of apps deployed, should consider developing an app store, the study suggests.

Gartner predicted in the study that 25% of the top 50 global banks would pursue this strategy and deploy an app store by 2016.

Those banks would deploy an app store for retail, investment and commercial clients that would include app descriptions and reviews. The app store would likely include apps for direct download and links to apps available in public stores, the study said. Offering a bank app store wouldn’t preclude also releasing apps to the public stores, the study noted.

Jonathan Camhi has been an associate editor with Bank Systems & Technology since 2012. He previously worked as a freelance journalist in New York City covering politics, health and immigration, and has a master's degree from the City University of New York's Graduate School ... View Full Bio