“We’ll probably be the last generation to use the term credit card and debit card…It will probably be debit access or credit access, and it will likely be loaded on to a mobile device.”
John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo at Goldman Sachs Financial Conference, Dec 8, 2015
What does this means for banks
The Banking industry is about to be disrupted! Most banks and bankers are totally unprepared for this and will be caught off-guard. New players shall emerge like: Number 26 and Monese.
Banks have a window of opportunity to launch online mobile banking spin-offs that will blend more than one functions under a single mobile interface such as:
- account management
- payments
- credit facilities
- transfers
Other important consequences
- Banking becomes international and geography independent, and this shall mean ENORMOUS OPPORTUNITY for the few, and ENORMOUS COMPETITION for the rest.
- Cross-selling – Upselling should happen IN THE APP!!
- NEW REVENUE streams based on following purchase behavior.
What it means for mobile strategy
Banks should design and immediately follow an aggressive and transformational 2-faced mobile strategy that should include the re-design of all its products to fit the new channels of delivery.
What it means for Natural Language Understanding technology and for the importance of conversational self-service
- The internet (mobile & web) has now officially taken over and the only remaining human powered channel will be the contact center.
- The contact center will be the only way to cover special requests, or get fast service (e.g. balance) without connectivity. Special requests are the ones that require extra authentication, manual intervention (reissue lost pin etc)
- Voice will be the (only) interface of choice for the smaller / carry on devices (smart watches) that don’t have the real estate for proper touch interface.
- Authentication by voice (VB) can play a significant role since the devices that have fingerprint tech are very expensive and will only be available for the high end market over the next decade.
- Banking will eventually happen also through the IM/Text channel so Natural Language Understanding (NLU) becomes extremely important.
- Mobile apps will capitalize on NLU to reduce complexity of navigation. Mobile app menus will become the new DTMF menu tree.