Citi bank, the US’s third largest by assets,
has told its customers to download a mandatory upgrade of the
iPhone application after a security flaw was found, raising doubts
about the bank’s already struggling m-banking service. 

According to The Wall Street Journal,
the Citi mobile app saved personal account information in a hidden
file on users’ iPhones, impacting the security of around 117,600
customers who have signed onto the app since its launch in March
2009. 

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The information saved on the smartphones
included account numbers, bill payment information and security
access codes. 

If customers synced the information to a Mac
or PC they were also warned of a further risk from hackers
accessing information downloaded onto their computer. 

“We have no reason to believe that our
customers’ personal information has been accessed or used
inappropriately by anyone,” Citi said. 

While Citi was an early advocate of mobile
banking, it has continued to trail behind rival Bank of America’s
(BofA) sector-leading mobile banking customer numbers. Within a
year of the banks launching their respective m-banking offerings in
the summer of 2008, BofA had signed up one million customers
(see
RBI 594); by contrast, at that stage Citi had
20,000.

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BofA now boasts around 4 million m-banking
customers and more mobile customers than any other US
bank. 

In stark contrast, Citi’s total m-banking
customers stand shy of hitting the one million mark with an
estimated 800,000 users. 

Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have around 3.4
million and 2 million m-banking customers respectively.

While the Citi Mobile app is the
10th most-popular offering in the finance category of
Apple’s app store, BofA came second and Chase, the retail unit of
JPMorgan Chase, came top. 

The security flaw comes a few months after the

bank rolled out an app to its credit cardholders although
the bank said the security flaw only impacted the Citi Mobile
app.