Daily usage of mobile banking in South Korea increased 13 percent from three months earlier in the first quarter as more people opted to use their smartphones for banking transactions, central bank data showed Monday.

The volume of daily transactions processed via smartphones averaged 40.4 million in the January-March period, compared with 35.7 million in the fourth quarter of last year, according to the Bank of Korea.

By amount, daily mobile banking transactions averaged 2.3 trillion won ($2.1 billion), growing 8.2 percent from three months earlier.

The central bank noted that while Internet banking transactions based on PCs have mostly been stalled since 2011, the portion of mobile banking is on a continuous rise.

But the data also showed that despite growing usage, people were still reluctant to process major transactions via their smartphones.

While mobile banking accounted for 52.4 percent of all Internet banking transaction volume, the amount processed accounted for only 6 percent of the total.

The data also showed that 92.1 percent of mobile banking usage was for viewing bank account history rather than processing money transactions. (Yonhap)