More than 80 million European consumers will be banking online by 2007, according to a new report from Datamonitor.
Internet banking has been a qualified success with the number of customers expected to reach 60 million this year, up from 23 million in 2000. The UK and Germany are Europe’s largest online markets, although Scandinavia has the most internet bankers per head of the population (0.4 in Sweden and Finland).
Despite the growth in customer numbers, analysts point out that banks now face the dual challenge of getting the basics of internet banking right to encourage new users and developing new services and functionality to satisfy experienced internet bankers. Datamonitor predicts that the number of online banking customers will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 7.5% over the next few years reaching 84 million in 2007.
Although encouraging for the financial sector, this estimate seems somewhat conservative given that Forrester is forecasting that European internet bankers will total 130 million in four years time (see Online Banking Gaining In Popularity).
