Mobile banking users to double by 2020
Anil Gandharve is associate vice president at Mindtree Europe
On the background of a recent study revealing that UK mobile banking users are set to double to 32.5 million by 2020, banks need to tailor their customer experience models heavily towards mobile devices, with the fundamental focus on creating a “mobile-first” strategy, if not the more radical “mobile-only” strategy, write Anil Gandharve and Avishek Mukhopadhyay
According to our opinion there are three critical areas that will set banks aside from their competition come 2020, these being increasing use of wearables, expanding the utility of the mobile wallet beyond payments and advanced features in mobile banking, going beyond pure transactions.
Wearable Banking
Wearable technology is one of the most recent disruptions in the banking industry, while some may view it as a mere fad, others view it as the future of technology. By investing and rolling out wearable-centric features, banks can reduce marketing costs, enhance customers’ experience, gain enormous publicity and most importantly grow closer to their customers. Some of the early services rolled out by banks include checking bank balances, payment confirmations and reminders; however future use-cases will make these basic transactions look primitive. In coming months we will see services such as the transfer of money being completed using smartwatches through voice based instructions. Going ahead, banking functions such as determining credit limits will be linked to health parameters captured by a smartwatch.
Despite the importance to stay relevant and innovative, banks need to remember that customers still turn to them for traditional services such as borrowing money when needed and growing savings with minimal risk. Therefore, there is a fine line in calculating the right balance between traditional and modern business models when striving for customer trust and loyalty.
Integrating Mobile Wallet With Utilities Other Than Payment
The next steps towards mobile banking include integrating wearable devices with mobile payments, so that they can work in tandem to enrich the Mobile Wallet experience through additional utility services including the likes of hotel keys, airline loyalty cards and identity cards like driving license or voters’ identity. This may also lead to the possibility of payment through other mechanisms such as gift cards. Integrating your social network within mobile wallets can make sharing, gifting, lending seamless.
Today’s fast-paced and technology driven society has labelled it ‘reasonable’ for customers to demand things now, while waiting is simply ‘unacceptable.’ Competition within the mobile wallet space is just getting started, so in order to stay ahead of the game, banks need to already be adopting this strategy into their customer experience model; faster and secure payments equal happier customers.
Advanced Mobile Banking
Mobile banking is growing and developing at rapid speeds, to maintain customer loyalty and satisfaction banks need to aim for higher levels of innovation to enhance the customer journey and keep ahead of the game. This means moving beyond simple transactions and hosting more advanced features such as personalisation, advanced visualisation features, integrating social media features and introducing more third party services by leveraging API based ecosystems. A majority of banks are integrating features such as remote check deposits, capturing of user details through mobiles, peer to peer transfers, and personal finance management within mobile banking applications. The use of communication platforms such as Skype and FaceTime allows customer service and advisory to be in touch with customers at any time throughout the day.
Furthermore, we will see banks turning to social media to tackle the dated challenges of traditional banking, and cultivate customer trust through online communities. Banks are rapidly coming to terms with the fact that their competition is not only fellow banks or financial institutions but the likes of modern day online giants like Amazon, Facebook and Uber.
Whether they want to accept it or not, digital is a game changer and banks need to start channelling a large part of their IT investment into digital initiatives. With competition emerging from unusual sources, mostly driven by evolving technology, the banking industry will no longer remain the same as we know of it today. Leading up to 2020, banking will undergo a huge digital disruption powered by the changing consumer behaviour of Digital Natives, and modern day banks will be short sighted to see other banks as their only competitors.
