ENTERPRISE | REAL CASE Charu Murgai [email protected]

How Mobile Banking can Turn Around Fortunes for a By offering mobile banking services, managed to activate over 19 lacs bank accounts and brought down the overall operational cost by 70%

here were times when people use to prefer touch. With so much digital transformation going around visiting a bank branch or accessing ATMs for and the world quickly going mobile, too have en- regular banking needs. But as the times are tered the foray and are offering much more convenient changing, and with people getting hooked and personalized services. Banks are turning to mobile to varied digital platforms, there is a massive banking services and applications to enhance customer Tshift in the way banking is done. Right from paying mobile experience. For instance, HDFC Bank, which is one of the bills to electricity, shopping, etc, all are done with a single largest in the mobile banking space in terms of value of

46 | February 29, 2016 www.dqindia.com A CyberMedia Publication | ENTERPRISE | REAL CASE

transactions, said that for them mobile banking is growing 100% and they expect that mobile banking will overtake internet banking this year. Making financial inclusion as their key focus area, many government and regional rural banks have started their way to mobile banking and are seeing a lot of traction in terms of their businesses. Even the Prime Minister Naren- dra Modi also launched ‘financial inclusion’ initiative with a vision of making every Indian a holder of a bank account. As per the data available, three years ago, 2.5 bn people across the globe were not availing formal financial serv- ices in developing economies. A report released last year stated that the number of ‘unbanked’ people dropped 20%, making the count to 2 bn individuals. So far in In- dia, as per the data, about 40% of the population does not have access to any formal financial services. It means they have to rely on on cash or informal services which are typically not safe and are also expensive. Having said that, financial inclusion is a must in the process of socio- economic empowerment and poverty alleviation. Working on a similar approach, Uttar Bihar Gramin Bank was look- ing for a mobile platform which could enable them to offer financial services to people in the remotest areas. They were looking for a technology vendor which can provide a robust IT infrastructure and end-to-end management capabilities required to offer banking services in the far flung areas. After evaluating the services offered by vari- ous vendors in the market, the bank partnered with HCL actions smoothly. They supported in the installation, oper- Infotech as its ICT based financial services partner. ation and maintenance of servers, managed intermediate system like card management, BC management, banking THE SOLUTION IMPLEMENTED terminal/handheld device management, switching, MIS, HCL developed a front end device capable of end-to-end etc. HCL also supported equipment and application soft- online integration with inbuilt biometric authentication. ware to execute online transactions with multiple connec- The solution comprised features such as STQC certified tivity options. They provided an interface and established finger print scanner, biometric authentication, smartcard connectivity between front end and intermediate system. read/write capability, magnetic swipe reader with pin-pad authentication for the Rupay card users, printer and a THE TURNAROUND speaker. The mobile banking services offered by the bank had a To accelerate the initiative, as many as 2,500 business significant impact in terms of improving livelihood of the correspondents spread over 4,300 villages were made people in the remote areas. Not only mobile banking fully aware of the functionalities of the micro ATM to carry triggered financial literacy for the unbanked, it also had out financial services with ease. These business- corre a drastic impact on the bank’s operations as the mobile spondents were educated about account opening, Aad- device brought down the overall operational cost by 70%. har based transactions, Kisan Credit Card (KCC), General Through the device, the bank covered over 7,500 vil- Credit Card (GCC), pension, deposists, withdrawals, third lages and activated over 19 lacs bank accounts. The in- party services, all facilitated by biometric authentication, troduction of a mobile device has led to a sudden surge etc. in banking transactions also. For the Uttar Bihar Gramin Apart from this, HCL supported the bank on technical Bank as many as 47 lacs transactions were done and the architecture and management to carry out banking trans- bank had over 30 lacs enrolments.

| A CyberMedia Publication www.dqindia.com February 29, 2016 | 47