Tag: mobile banking

The new payments app will be called the SBI Buddy and it is going to be launched by the financial institution.

The State Bank of India (SBI) has now announced that it intends to jump into the rapidly growing mobile wallet category, that already features large players in the country such as Pocket, from ICICI Bank, and PayZapp, from HDFC.

The bank has revealed that it is planning to take part in this market, getting in while it is still very young.

A recent report from UBS and KPMG has shown that the mobile banking using population of India is the youngest in the world. In fact, those using their smartphones for purposes such as checking accounts and for mobile wallet apps are notably younger than the users in Europe and the United States. That report cautioned banks by saying that if they do not establish solid mobile banking strategies, they are at risk of losing their customers, and failing to be able to take advantage of sizeable cross-selling opportunities over the short term, while harming their competitive advantage over the longer term.

The report explained that banks are now taking on strategies that involve mobile wallet and banking apps.

In this way, banks of all sizes are taking on an attitude of “mobile first,” while the larger institutions are working on gathering up technology startups that will give them the ability to keep up with the rapidly changing and evolving industry. The report stated that “Indian customers demonstrate the highest likelihood of changing banks driven by the availability of better mobile banking services.”

It is also important to point out that SBI isn’t the only financial institution that is currently working on developing a mobile banking or payment app to enter into the industry at this point. YES Bank and Axis Bank have also recently revealed that they will be launching their own mobile apps and that these wallets will be available to customers very soon.

The SBI Buddy mobile wallet application will soon become available to current customers of the bank, as well as to certain other subscribers. The bank has already partnered up with a number of merchants, which mean that once an m-banking account has been opened by the consumer through the mobile app, that person will be able to use mobile payments without having to download each merchant’s individual apps.

According to the research from the UBS investment bank, smartphones could lead to widespread closures.

As a growing number of people start to use mobile banking as a regular part of their interactions with their accounts, it is now being predicted that hundreds of bank branches across Australia may be forced to close.

A survey was conducted by the UBS investment bank and it predicted more than 600 closures.

Analysts from UBS in New York, London, Japan, and Hong Kong partnered up with KPMG in order to produce a massive 54-page report that it has now published and released. Within it, 67 different bank management teams were surveyed across 18 different countries. Among them, there was an average expectation of a branch reduction of 5.6 percent as a direct result of the rise of mobile banking use.

That said, in Australia, that figure is predicted to be about twice the average of closures from mobile banking strategies.

The report showed that despite the fact that Australia has seen a steady number of bank branches for quite a long time, the survey respondents feel that the country will be facing an 11 percent closure rate as a result of banking over smartphones and other mobile devices.

Based on June 2014 data from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, there were 5483 bank branches in the country at that time. Should the predictions of 11 percent be accurate, that would mean that there would be an estimated 603 branch closures across the country.

Because of this fear, many bank branches across the country have worked hard to reconfigure themselves in order to create a much more drop-in style environment and by reducing or removing tellers. This makes it possible for customers to be sold more types of products at their own convenience.

According to the UBS statistics over the span of the next three years, it could easily be that a cumulative reduction of costs by about 10 percent, as well as a boost of 6 percent rise in bank revenues. Over that same span of time, it is anticipated that there will reach the point that 46 percent of mobile related transactions, which Is an increase over the current 25 percent, and the 13 percent from 2013.