In an exclusive interview with India Technology News, Rajesh BLN, SVP – Business Development, Vayana, talks about how their newly launched banking solution is a boon to Apple users and the future technological plans of the company
What motivated you to bring banking solutions to the literal finger tips of Apple users, who are obviously a very large number?
Our Customers (Banks) are always looking to do something new and different on the Digital Channels. In particular, Retail Banking Channel is like a fashion business, and one has to be on top of the trends. Wearable especially Apple Watch caught the fancy of affluent and we saw an opportunity for us and our customers to differentiate in the marketplace. We started working with one of our customers to see their interest in taking this offering to market. Fortunately, we had the right customer to partner with for this offering. Most of the players in this space offer reporting and notification services on wearable but our customer wanted to offer transaction services as well. They worked with the regulators on the necessary approvals to enable transaction services on the new channel. So here we are with a new trendy channel to deliver our solution that is just beyond notification services.
Do you think the market is prepared and will use this application for regular monitoring of their banking activities?
We are heading toward a world where devices and form factors may not matter. New technologies such as BOTs are making executing transactions much simpler and banks have started adopting it. So we will see this developing into device-agnostic market. We believe customers, would expect banking services to be available irrespective of the channel they access it from. It could be desktops, mobiles, wearables, Social Media, Television, or eComm Portals. We will see these trends with different levels of maturity in different markets. Hence it will be imperative for Banks to be available across all these channels.
Should android users expect good news as well?
From Channel’s point of view we are ready. As we have segregated the presentation layer from the customer experience layer we can cater to any form of channel. As far as Android users are concerned we are ready with the platform and are in different stages of discussions.
What is Vayana’s future plans when it comes to digital banking solutions?
Today there is a lot of talk about digital banking. Banks are working on evolving their digital strategies given the challenges of multiple legacy systems, different technologies, the multiplicity of channels, integration challenges, and devices. Given this situation and our long experience in the channels space, we believe Vayana has a unique role to play in terms of working with our clients and prospects to help them streamline their digital strategies. From a Solutions point of view, we already developed the Omnichannel Customer Experience platform based on the Open API driven architecture. This allows us to present ourselves through a variety of channels. We will be constantly working on developing innovative engagement tools which will enhance the customer experience and help our clients to engage with their customers at a much deeper level. We are helping different banks in moving a lot of their services DIGITAL – such as new customer onboarding, loan approvals and onboarding new investments.
As we work on helping banks to deepen their engagement with their customers, there will be lot of interactions between banks, customers and the various channels and a lot of data will be generated. This data will be useful for our clients to understand their customer behavior. So this leads us to Channel Analytics which will be made available as part of our offering.
What are your next geographical expansion plans?
Conventionally we have focused on India, Middle East and Africa. In the immediate future, our focus will be on developing North African Market, other Arab world countries such as Iran and South East Asian markets such as Indonesia and Vietnam. Many of these markets are challenged by high number of unbanked population but at the same time there is a high degree of mobile and internet penetration which will enable banks to serve these customers. Therefore, our strategy will be to equip the financial institutions to define their digital strategies and provide innovative solutions.
Can you please elaborate on your emphasis on omnipresence of banking solutions?
As I said earlier the world will become more device agnostic and at one point it will move towards banking without interface. Artificial Intelligence will play larger role in customer interactions. From current stage of multi-channel, siloed systems and fragmented data, the banks must quickly move in customer’s world to provide seamless customer experience across channels. So, doesn’t mean they must scrap their current legacy systems because it is not feasible from time as well as investment point of view. Banks should look at strategies on how to create an omnichannel customer experience layer around their existing infrastructure. This omnichannel customer experience layer will shield their current systems and help them to provide consistent experience across channel. But is that enough because the financial institutions will have to constantly analyze the world of their customers where they are spending their maximum time and ensure that they are omnipresent in their customer’s world.
