Mobile Apps for a Bank
With around 880 Mn mobile connections in the country and mobile internet seeing an upswing, Banks are gearing up to provide their mobile APP to stay ahead in game. Banking APPs cover basic transaction queries, Fund transactions (imobile, State Bank Anywhere), mobile wallets (PayTM, Chillar, Pockets), mutual fund (Reliance Mutual Fund, HDFC Mutual Fund,ICICI Financial Calculator), stock market (BSE India, Kotak Mobile Stock Trader), ATM/ Branch finder (SBI Finder).
If we were to design an APP for a bank then we need to take following points in consideration:-
- Basic Functionality
- Single/Multiple APP
- Customer
- Security (To be discussed in subsequent posts)
- Value Added Service
Basic Functionality: The basic functionalities to be included are :-
- Basic functionality that are available on they have provided on their net banking website.
- Addressing mechanism for capturing the queries that a bank receives through branches/ net banking/ call center where standard replies are sufficient.
- Other functions like fund transfer, FD create/premat, MF purchase, Insurance, bill payment, alerts.
- Branch/ATM locator using GPS
Single/Multiple APP
I am not a great fan of single APP as single APPs tend to be big in size and there is limited memory space for APPs in many phones; also many functionalities that are not required by the user tends to reduce user experience. Multiple APPs allow the bank to design the APP with the various user profiles like a profile targeted for a college student will do well to provide banking services with wallet services, services providing better facilities at coffee shops, fashion stores. Whereas a professional would like an APP with basic banking services helping him with choosing of investment products, insurance product. An elderly gentle(wo)men will be more concerned about security. We can design basic functionalities and then package them as per our customer segmentation for that particular APP.
Customer
As explained in last para, APP design will be heavily based on customer need and preferences, but more than that we need to understand the kind of technology s/he will consume. :- Maturity/knowledge level of customers and kind of mobile phones they would use can play a huge role in success of a mobile app. A customer with high end phone and high bandwidth plan is easy to cater, but customers with feature phones and low band width are large in number. Our design should support the nature of our customer profile.
Value Added Services
Banks can provide value added services (need not be chargeable) like a chatting platform for client to discuss various issues. An expense chart to give them idea of how their money is spent. Also there are no APPs for corporates and SMEs, dealer finance to help industry take benefit of this shift in technology.
Though the design of Mobile APP for Banking is large but above things can be a starting point for the same.
The views expressed in above article are my personal views and are not related to institutions I am attached with.