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Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Sensing that more people are spending their time scrolling through their social media platforms and hardly want to be interrupted, Standard Chartered bank has devised means to find them there.
The bank has added a feature SC Keyboard on their digital app, SC Mobile, designed to show up on the lower-left corner of the chats whenever one has opened say Facebook, WhatsApp or any other social media platform.
Only account holders in the bank will use the feature.
The new feature, according to Moses Rutahigwa, the StanChart head of retail banking, means that one will not need to leave their chats to look for the app in the phone, but click directly from the chats to bank.
The feature shows how far banks will go in the race to win the digital banking battle. Young people, who spend most of their time on social media, are particularly of interest for these banks.
The only unique thing is that the platform shows up while you are having social chats.
Rutahigwa says the feature performs almost all banking functions.
Standard Chartered and Stanbic banks have both indicated that digital platforms make up more than 80% of their transactions. But to keep the customers, banks are adding features to digital platforms to entice them to stay or enlist more people.
“Less than 20 per cent of the transactions are happening in the branches,” said Rutahigwa.
Audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has predicted that by 2020, retail banking will look different from the way it is now because of customer expectations, regulatory requirements, demographics and new competitors serving people without going through the old bank.
This implies banks have to continuously innovate to add more features on their platforms.
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