The Huffington Post UK: Cognizant’s Head of Banking and Financial Services in the UK & Ireland Blogs About the Future of Mobile Payments and Banking

“The role of the bank as a venue or outlet has already changed and continues to evolve to ensure it remains a relevant customer channel,” writes Tony Virdi. “With high street banks in the UK having ever increasing numbers of active internet banking customers, the volume of digital banking transactions is growing exponentially. But it is the even more rapid rise in mobile banking and payments that is making traditional bankers sit up and take even more notice.”

Customer experience is the key, notes Virdi. “The opportunity to instantaneously personalize banking products via digital channels, for example, helps to reposition both banking and non-banking services, increase wallet share and income, and hence provide an important driver for change. In the corridors of power in UK banks change is also afoot as discretionary investment budgets in retail banks migrate towards digital. Digital bankers are rapidly becoming the new power base.”

According to Virdi, banks are increasingly focusing on m-commerce as a means of both providing better customer service as well as enhancing their top lines. “M-commerce provides banks with unique opportunities to develop complete and holistic payment solutions in collaboration with retailers and telecom providers so as to provide customers with seamless, safe and secure ways of paying for the goods and services they buy on their mobile devices,” he writes.

Virdi points out that the regulators, telecom operators, regulated firms and vendors will need to work closely together to parry the threats of fraud. “Key to encouraging mobile payment adoption among consumers is ease of use, a ‘risk-free’ customer experience, i.e. ensuring continued high levels of security as people are increasingly wary of parting with their cash, whether coins and notes, online, or via mobile means," he writes. "For banks, financial institutions and retailers, more interoperation and cooperation is required if they are to benefit from this disruptive consumer driven change to traditional payments and banking.”

Virdi adds, “The wind of change is rife, and it is progressively being driven by consumer demand as they seek new channels for payments (and communication), and it is up to banks to embrace this disruption at pace to retain their relevance and move with the times.”

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