Consulting firm KPMG International has issued new survey data collected as a part of a report on banks and mobile payments. The report, called "Monetizing Mobile: How Banks Are Preserving Their Place in the Payment Value Chain," says that 84 percent of the respondents from the banking and financial services believe mobile payments will have significant importance to their business within the next one to four years. Nearly a quarter (73 percent) of those same execs think mobile payments will be "mainstream" within the next four years.

"Leading banks are working feverishly to stay ahead of their peers and the new players in this space by developing mobile payments solutions, getting actively involved with standards setting, and partnering with other players in the mobile payments value chain such as merchants and mobile network operators," said Carl Carande, national account leader of KPMG LLP's Banking and Finance practice, in a statement about the report.

"It remains to be seen whether the banking industry establishes enough of a foothold in the mobile payments space and maintains its share of payments revenue," he added.

According to the KPMG report, new payment market entrants specializing in online payments, online service providers, and partnerships between mobile network operators and device manufacturers represent threats to the position of banks in the payment market. The report, however, also said that banks have a perceived edge over the competition. Executives from the telecommunications, technology and retail sectors said banks will likely continue to play an important role in mobile payments.

"We believe that if banks can roll out a safe, easy-to-use and ubiquitously-accepted system, consumers will very quickly adopt mobile payment solutions as they have other mobile services," said the report's co-author, Mitch Siegel, a KPMG LLP Financial Services practice principal, in a statement about the report.

The new report from KPMG echoes the findings of other recent surveys on the adoption of mobile payments. The survey says more than 70 percent of executives from banking and financial services think security concerns are the biggest challenge. In addition to security, the KPMG survey pointed to a lack of standards and infrastructure as hindrances to the expansion of mobile payments.

The new survey was drawn from interviews of 145 from organizations such as commercial banks, payment processors and merchant acquirers during the first quarter of 2011.