Thirty percent of U.S. adults would feel comfortable using a voice-activated conversational interface provided by their bank or credit union to pay a bill or make other banking transactions by speaking to this interface and providing verbal instructions, according to a recent report from Mercator Advisory Group.

Young adults and high-income earners are especially interested in using such an interface, according to a consumer survey in the report, which finds that roughly half of them would feel comfortable doing so.

The survey findings are based on responses from a sample of 3,000 U.S. adults with banking relationships, which were collected in Mercator's Customer Monitor Survey Series annual online banking and channels survey, conducted in November 2016.

The report, Digital Banking: Shift to Smartphones May Require New Support, reveals that consumers are performing more banking activities online and by mobile, especially by smartphone, and increasingly prefer to use smartphones to make bank transactions (1 in 4 respondents indicated that they prefer banking via smartphone).

The fastest growth in digital banking is in mobile banking, which consumers use both to communicate with financial institutions and to perform banking activities.

The percentage of U.S. consumers performing banking activities by smartphone or tablets rose to 65 percent in 2016, up from 60 percent in 2015 and 58 percent in 2014. The percentage using mobile to make bank transactions — such as paying bills from an FI's website, transferring funds to another person's account, or depositing checks — has risen to 45 percent of U.S. adults, up from 41 percent in 2015 and 36 percent in 2014.