At the BFSI Digital Leader Summit 2017, Ritesh Pai, Digital Banking Head, Yes Bank, talked about the different innovate steps which they consider as revolutionary steps in the digital banking sector. “We have a lot of interoperable platforms. We were the first bank in India to launch the two-factor authentication with SMS based PIN, in 2004”, he said.
The private sector bank claims that design thinking is core to their product development. The bank upgrades its system to provide superior banking experience to its customer. In order to do that they keep on re-platforming the solutions and have re-launched new mobile apps. Yes Bank has launched a digital banking service, ‘SIMsePAY’, whereby any account holder can do money transfers, pay utility bills, and other mobile banking service without a smartphone or the Internet. “We are reaching out to the rural masses through SIMsePAY. Most of the people still have feature phones in India and we want to make the process easier for them”, said Ritesh.
Social media has been an inseparable part of life these days. People spent most of their time on social media platforms and find it quite interesting and convenient. Keeping this into account, Yes Bank has introduced YES TAG, which allows the bank to connect with customers on social media and make banking as easier as handling their social media account. “Twitter, Facebook Messenger, We Chat, Telegram and Skype, customers can do banking transactions on these five messaging apps with YES TAG. Customers can check their balance, mini statement, fixed deposit details, cheque status and much more through messaging apps. Also, Rs 5000 daily, can be sent to beneficiaries, registered on Retail NetBanking, from either of these messaging apps. Apart from that, customers can check their account balance, fixed deposit details, mini statement, last five transactions, request chequebook, account balance cheque status, and stop cheque through messaging apps”, Ritesh said. The fund transfer, through YES TAG, can be done instantly anywhere, anytime at no cost and it is much secured as the transactions are secured with six-digit pass code. Yes Bank is the first bank in India to provide such a unique platform.
YES PAY, a digital wallet, is one other important convenient offering from Yes Bank that Ritesh talked about. YES PAY enables tech-savvy smartphone and social media users to register seamlessly and then spend wisely. “The application offers a free virtual card for online transactions and Unified Payment Interface (UPI) for seamless payments. It can be accessed through Facebook, without a separate registration”, he said. YES PAY facilitates offerings like Mobile/DTH recharge, pay bills, purchase of gift vouchers and avail discount coupons. This wallet does not require both the transacting parties to be registered on the wallet.
API is another important aspect on which Ritesh talked about. In order to offer a hassle-free service to its corporate customers, Yes Bank has come up with API banking. “There is a large scope to implement digital banking in B2B. API allows clients to access the bank’s transaction processing services from their ERP environment. It is extremely secure manner as it need not create any file or log in to corporate net banking, transactions can be triggered as API calls to bank’s system through secured system integration between Corporate Customer’s ERP and Bank”, mentioned Ritesh.
In addition, Pai also spoke about ART (Alliances, Relationships, and Technologies) approach which let them move further and achieve their goals. “We realized that the rapidly evolving landscape of financial technologies, all innovations in this space will not happen within the bank. In the sake of delivering better service, we look for alliances which could help us in doing so. So, we have partnered with Fintech companies to provide better banking experience to our customers”, he stated. Yes Bank has partnered with more than Fintech startups across different verticals including payments, regulatory technology, and wealth management. Yes Bank also claims to have partnered with several insurance players in the country.