By: Miriam Cross at the American Banker

The ability tozap paymentsbetween smartphones anddeposit a checkfrom your bedroom are now mundane features in a bank’smobile app.

In fact, the most important components in a mobile app, including informational activities such as finding account information, transactional activities such as money transfers and service activities such as setting alerts, have not changed in the past few years, said Peter Wannemacher, principal analyst in digital banking at consulting firm Forrester.

“What has changed is which mobile app features have risen, or are rising” to the level customers expect, he said, such as card management or peer-to-peer payments.

A bank’s mobile app won’t necessarily make or break its relationship with customers. But the quality of the app influences whether the customer will trust this financial institution and, in turn, how deep that relationship will run.

“The majority of bank customers have a secondary account somewhere, particularly those under age 40,” said Jennifer White, senior director of banking and payments intelligence at J.D. Power. A better mobile app can be one factor that tugs them toward one bank over another.

Maintaining a successful mobile app is partly about staying ahead of the curve in terms of which features customers want or expect – even if it’s only a portion of the customer base, because one size does not fit all in consumer banking – as well as ensuring the more “basic” components are visually appealing, self-evident and easily navigable. It also means keeping an eye on which features have moved from mildly important to vital in recent years.