OCBC Bank sceptical that NFC mobile payments solves customer issue
OCBC Singapore believes that peer-to-peer mobile banking will grow in a big way. November 06, 2012 | ResearchWhen Singapore announced its nation-wide near-field communications (NFC) initiative under a consortium of, among others, Citibank, DBS, EZ-Link and all three mobile operators in Singapore to develop the necessary infrastructure and ecosystem, it highlighted the role of the government in advancing a still-hotly contentious issue of NFC mobile payments—the private sector was not able to come together without incentives and a call for support by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) own IDA’s iN2015 Masterplan. Two banks were markedly missing from the list, OCBC and UOB. UOB wasn’t really a surprise. Being the most conservative among the three domestic banks, it was the last to roll out its mobile banking suite in 2012. The absence of OCBC, however, a pioneer in Southeast Asia in mobile banking, raised some eyebrows. In NFC mobile payments, while some banks and non-bank financial institutions are tripping over themselves to be in the thick of things, a few high profile Asian banks are hesitant in jumping on the bandwagon, even though they could easily roll out this technology. OCBC is one of them. When OCBC rolled out its mobile banking proposition in 2006—the first bank in Southeast Asia to do so—it was already a secured and interactive mobile banking service proposition on GRPS and I-mode platform. The bank had secured the collaboration of all three telcos and had an advanced end-to-end authentication system compared to other banks in Asia. At the time, mobile banking solved a real customer issue—offering banking on the go anytime, anywhere. “Innovation needs to solve customer problems and make life easier for them. When we launched mobile banking and with it mobile payments, it had an edge in significantly improving customer convenience – it addressed an unmet need. If I am on the move and can make a peer-to-peer payment or bill payment, it is a real problem solved. But in the case of NFC customer-to-business p... Please login to read the complete article. If you already have an account, you can login now or subscribe/register.
Categories: Channels, Innovation, Mobile Banking, Payments, Retail Banking, Technology & OperationsChannels,Innovation,Mobile banking,Payments,retail,technology, Channels,Innovation,Mobile Banking,Payments,Retail Banking,Technology & Operations, OCBC, UOB, NFC, IDA
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