Friday, 26 October 2012

Can banking follow a Darwinian led evolution?



Has India made seismic progress with digital technology as compared to Australia or Singapore, given or inspite of our rather dismal internet penetration of just 1.65% and a diverse geography that makes even formalizing a central policy a mind-boggling task? While the world has made gargantuan strides with pocket-sized calendars that help one view financial history and make on-the-spot decisions, or a 19-inch touch screen which portrays currently relevant info about the transaction at hand, is India lagging behind with its sparsely scattered ATMs?

Opinions vary.  While most banks in India have in place their biometric smart card, handheld biometric POS devices for authentication and transaction, GPRS-enabled mobile phones and core banking solutions, Louwke van der Steen, Country Manager at Logica for India and SAARC firmly emphasizes that “…India needs to adopt technology more rapidly, especially on the mobile fronts.”

 Indian banks spend an average of Rs 150 crore on internet banking and developing banking software and hardware. The World bank has also allocated a whopping automation fund whereby banks like Dena Bank, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda each can mobilize Rs 100 crore. This augurs well for the Indian banking scenario so that it can rewrite ground-breaking rules much like PayPal integrating micropayments into its Facebook application as though building the world’s first virtual global currency.

Another interesting factor is how this translates for the average urban Indian comfortable with the ICICI launched iMobile, to pay bills, check balance, locate an ATM and order a checkbook. Surprisingly, our culture that does not permit us the glossy ‘spend-now-pay-later’ rhetoric provides us with perks we have taken for granted. While our US counterparts have to restrict calls to customer care and ATM transactions to just two in a month; we enjoy unlimited privileges; most of which play a major role in striking the right work-life balance.

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