Buy a coffee and open a Digibank account in India

Digibank has 1.2 mn Indian users and says that number will hit 5 mn by 2021, reports Tech in Asia

In India, customers of Café Coffee Day, a popular chain, can open a Digibank bank account when they pay for coffee. To do so, they need only their biometric-enabled ID card called Aadhaar, and Digibank’s app.

Each cafe outlet has a thumbprint reader for online authentication of customers. After this is confirmed, the bank’s software interfaces with the café’s cash register, captures the information, and opens the bank account.

DBS Bank launched Digibank, a mobile-only bank, in India in April last year.

It now has 1.2 million customers and projects that by 2021, it should have five million.

The bank accelerated momentum when it teamed up with the Indian conglomerate Reliance which wanted an e-wallet to offer such benefits as cashback and reward points to its 100 million customers.

Being branchless and paperless, Digibank eliminates the costly and onerous form-filling requirement. Using Digibank’s app alone, customers are empowered to open a new account, make payments, transfer money, and undertake other transactions.

With tech shaving operating costs, the bank can afford to be more generous with interest payments. Account holders earn seven per cent interest, one of the highest in the market which likely helped it win customers. It also paved the way for better customer engagement.

The artificial intelligence (AI) embedded in the app allows it to respond to customer queries in real-time without the need for human intervention. The AI also helps the bank to learn more about customers’ banking behaviour, so the bank can better figure out what services really matter to customers, DBS said in a statement in June this year.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here