Online retailers have become sophisticated at observing customer behaviour, and then marketing based on the individual’s inclinations and past actions. Now, banks are starting to do it too. That could lead to some interesting scenarios, according to Charles Radclyffe, chief executive officer at business intelligence consultancy BIPB.
With the rise in mobile payments and wallets, cash is dead and so is the ATM business, right? Not according to the ATM manufacturers, who are all being remarkably sanguine.
Russian bank Tinkoff Credit Systems has become the latest financial institution to launch a mobile wallet service, which is due to go live on 1 December 2013. The new wallet will target Russia and will be available on both Android and Apple iOS devices.
Staff at Metro Bank don’t have sales targets – instead, they are incentivised to enhance the customer experience, says Craig Donaldson, chief executive at Metro Bank. The bank is hoping this approach will pay off as it continues its campaign to win over the UK high street with the launch of a new branch at Cheapside in the heart of London.
India’s first women-only bank has launched in Mumbai and six other Indian cities, offering a service aimed at increasing financial inclusion for women in one of the world’s most populous countries.
A UK technology company has created a banking app that promises to help customers keep track of their finances at a glance, interfacing with the Pebble smartwatch which launched launched in January 2013.
Three independent UK building societies – Ipswich, Loughborough and Dudley – have agreed to use a new software as a service solution from Unisys to handle their mortgage and savings accounts. The deal represents the latest move in a series of steps by the UK’s building society sector to adopt cloud platforms.
Separating customer billing from core systems can have dramatic effects on the bottom line – a study by Boston Consulting Group at one bank found that 17% of clients were unprofitable.
Bulgaria’s DSK Bank has launched a mobile savings application called DSK Gameo, which is designed to encourage customers to save by making banking more fun, while helping the bank better understand its user-base.
Swansea Building Society has just upgraded its lending and saving platform to the latest version of vendor Sopra Banking Software’s mortgage and savings suite – a move that it says will help it to handle its regulatory reporting obligations much more effectively and launch new products quicker when needed.
Mobile phone-based payment solutions will eclipse cards by allowing bank customers to pay directly from their accounts, says a PKO Polski executive.
Standard Chartered Hong Kong has opened its first ‘digital’ branch, in which customers are greeted by giant screen TVs, the bank’s mobile apps in a special experience zone, and QR code scanning on an iWall, as well as e-signature pads and virtual queuing.
MasterCard has formed a deal with electronic payments processing company Emerging Markets Payments to sponsor issuers in Egypt and other African markets, in a move intended to help small issuers reach the region’s unbanked population.
Mobile banking may be on the rise around the world but the bank branch is not dead, according to new research by IT firm GFT Technologies.
South Africa’s Nedbank has opened a bank branch powered entirely by renewable energy, a move that it claims is the first of its kind in Africa.
India’s first all-female bank, Bharatiya Mahila Bank, plans to open on 19 November, the birthday of former Indian female Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
China’s miraculous economic catch up since reform and opening up has created an unprecedented generation of consumers. The way this generation has adopted the on-line world in China is very different from that in the West.
Furness Building Society has chosen a mortgage and savings suite from vendor Sopra Banking Software, to act as the society’s core banking platform. The new system is intended to help the society become more flexible and develop new products, especially online products.
The number of UK consumers who switched their current account during the last month increased by 11% compared to the same period last year, giving hope to the UK Payments Council that its new seven-day account switching service which launched on 16 September may be beginning to work.
The average bank now typically views web portals such as Google as the biggest threat to its business, according to a new report by French retail banking association Efma and business IT firm Infosys. Yet banks also report rising levels of innovation within their firms.
The constantly changing tide of national, European and global regulatory change is making life difficult for Britain’s building societies and banks to keep pace, according to Mark Smith, head of ALM at Yorkshire Building Society.
Large retail banks sometimes find it hard to change because they have assimilated many smaller banks through acquisition, each of which is running on a payments engine that has different features and may be very old. That can make it difficult to offer new services, but there is a solution according to Paul Thomalla, head of EMEA at US-based payments and technology firm ACI Worldwide.
Geopolitical shifts and increasing protectionism among nations will mean that the universal banking model is no longer sustainable – and there is little that anyone can do, according to Bill Michael, EMA head of financial services at KPMG. “The future shape of banking is beyond the control of boards, individual regulators or countries alone,” Michael […]
The UK Payments Council’s seven-day account switching service has been attacked as a “complete waste of time” by participants at a panel discussion in London on Wednesday – an allegation that was vigorously denied by representatives of the Council and the UK retail banking sector.
Tanzania’s CRDB Bank has migrated its Burundi subsidiary to software provider CR2’s BankWorld platform, in a bid to bring self-service banking to customers across the East African country.
Coming to the US to tell an audience of payments specialists about how the UK has transformed its national infrastructure over the past five years with the introduction of an effectively real-time payment system might have been considered a rough assignment – what can the Brits teach the wider world, particularly the US, about payments […]
Formed earlier this year, Zapp expects to launch next year with the backing of most of the major UK retail banks, Peter Keenan, chief executive of the venture, says that at the time of launch the Pay by Zapp service will be available to 40% of UK current account holders, and it will have the backing of 50% of the nation’s online and mobile retailers – including well-known brands.
The overwhelming majority of US consumers would not use a mobile wallet, according to a survey carried out by consultancy Consult Hyperion during September.
Understanding and embracing cross-channel communication behaviours will become increasingly critical to success in the banking industry, writes Steve Dille, SVP of global marketing at Maryland USA based communications firm Message Systems.
Leeds Building Society has joined the shared services alliance founded by HP Enterprise Services and the Yorkshire Building Society in September, in a deal that will see the society move its core application for mortgages and savings to the cloud. The deal also marks a growing recognition among the UK’s mid-tier institutions of the power of cloud to help them move with the times.
Bangladesh’s International Finance Investment and Commerce Bank has chosen a new core banking platform from Misys as it plans to increase its presence in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.
A new monthly index that measures UK current account switching has been launched by research firm TNS, providing a snapshot of changing consumer behaviour as the UK Payments Council’s switching service begins to take effect.
Following yet another revelation that UK banks have been mis-selling financial products to their customers, this time for identity theft and credit card protection insurance, the need for high street lenders to prove that they are changing their lending behaviour has never been so great.
US based Pinnacle Bank has chosen to outsource its processing to Fiserv as part of its Precision bank platform, in a move the bank says will help it to scale and roll out new products including mobile banking, bill payment and checking. Based in the town of Elberton in the US state of Georgia, Pinnacle […]
Nationwide has reported a significant increase in the number of customers switching their main current account to the building society, following the introduction of the new seven day account switching service on 16 September – but not everyone is convinced.
India’s ICICI Bank has launched a new app that lets customers pay their friends and share expenses between groups of people on Facebook.
Less than one in ten UK consumers has used a mobile wallet, despite the widespread availability of the technology, a new study has found.
With customers expecting consistent service across all channels, banks must step up to the plate and streamline their processes when it comes to customer interaction. Using the omnichannel approach, they’ll also reap the rewards of better customer intelligence and a clear idea of how best to spend precious budgets.
New technologies are transforming the consumer experience in retailing and in banking. For banks to remain relevant, they need to work with innovators, writes Paul Skeldon
Barclays is making a determined effort to capitalise on the two-year lead it has built up with its Pingit mobile payments application with two new applications intended to allow retailers to integrate mobile payments into their services.
