Do you still visit your bank for simple chores?
A global race is on to ‘mobilise’ banking. Financial institutions in the UAE too are riding the wave and bringing banking to smart phones, making it a convenient and hasslefree affair.
Aglobal survey by Bain & Company had asked 114,696 consumers about what they would miss the most for a day: their mobile phone or physical wallet. The results aren’t surprising. More than half of the people said they’ll miss their phone the most; and in China and South Korea, the percentage was more than a staggering 75 per cent.
Although standalone figures aren’t available for the UAE, we can expect a similar trend here too. The reasons are apparent. Smart phones have become a virtual world on their own, allowing you to entertain, socialise, bank, transact, carry on business, and do much more just at the click of a button or two.
Clearly, this is the age of smart communication and banks are no different. “A global race is on to ‘mobilise’ banking. Banks around the world have been working furiously to improve their mobile applications and optimise their web- sites for consumers’ smartphones and tablets. Yet the race has just begun. Leading banks are still learning how to take a mobile-first approach to re-imagine customer experiences in everything from buying a home to resolving an incident of fraud,” said the Customer Behaviour and Loyalty in Retail Banking report by Bain & Company.
The changes are for all of us to see. For instance, mobile banking in the UAE has moved a notch higher from just being able to check statements to making online requests; transfer funds domestically and internationally; buy and sell online; integrate credit card spends with the reward points; streamline all channels of transaction, etc.
This, however, is just the beginning. There is a whole lot that can be done with a smart phone. In China, for example, WeChat, a messaging app with some 600 million active users, has integrated financial services with the messaging service. Users can pay merchants and utility bills, send money to friends, deposit investments into money market accounts, book travel tickets, borrow money and carry out other daily financial transactions — converging commerce and social media effectively. As per a study, more than half of WeChat users open the application at least 10 times a day. No wonder the purchase volume through WeChat Wallet is more than 11 billion yuan (approximately Dh6.1 billion) to date.
Banks such as ADIB and FGB in the UAE are taking a lead in upgrading and evolving their mobile banking platforms. You can read about their features in the following pages.
With strict fraud controls and cyber security in place, digital banking channels save a lot of time and effort. If you still haven’t tried these features and applications, we insist you do and share your experience on how you find it.
Let’s make banking simpler with newage means.