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March 26, 2014 – According to a Federal Reserve Board report, more people are using their mobile phones in order to access their bank accounts, credit card accounts and other financial information.

The Fed said 33 percent of all mobile phone users and 51 percent of all smartphone users engaged in mobile banking in 2013 – up from 28 and 48 percent, respectively, the previous year. They described the difference in the number of people using phones to make payments at the point of sale as increasing "threefold" between 2012 and 2013 – to 17 percent of smartphone users and 9 percent of the total adult population.

"The most common mobile banking activities continue to be reviewing account balances, monitoring recent transactions, or transferring money between accounts," the Fed said in a release. "The use of mobile phones to deposit checks by taking pictures of them using the phone's camera again increased substantially between surveys, with 38 percent of mobile banking users having deposited a check with their phone in 2013."

The survey also showed that consumers use their smartphones to compare prices while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, or to browse product reviews online. More than two-thirds of the consumers using phones to compare prices reported they had changed their decision about where to purchase a product based on the information.