Canara Bank to invest Rs 1,000 cr for building digital banking backbone

Canara Bank is planning to come up with its super-app next month which is yet to be named.

Public sector lender Canara Bank plans to invest about Rs 1,000 crore over the next three years for building a digital banking ecosystem, including a super-app.

The Bengaluru-based bank will unveil its super app (yet to be named) next month. This would involve revamping the mobile banking platform with 262 features replicating branch banking, K Satyanarayana Raju, executive director, Canara Bank told Business Standard. The super-app is in the beta testing phase to get feedback on functioning and ease of use.  

Raju said the lender has already spent about Rs 800 crore in the last two fiscals on the digital eco-system, including mobile banking, data analytics and systems. The part of savings on operating expenses has been deployed for investment in the digital backbone.

Fellow public sector banks, which already have a super app, include State Bank of India – Yono, Bank of Baroda – Bob World and Union Bank of India. Super-apps straddle financial services on the platform to provide seamless experience. This would mean increasingly more and more customers will skip banking apps for specific activities and use only Super-app.

With the advance of digitisation, a super-app would cease to be a unique edge for banking entities. In fact, it would become the important pillar of set-up for omni-channel customer experience set-up.  

Last year, the bank set up a business analytics vertical with two wings – one for data analytics for regulatory requirements and another for lead generation plus data mining of customer information.

“Now we are strengthening the vertical by doubling the staff strength with specialists to 40. Plus, the bank has built an API banking stack for corporate banking. The integration of this facility is complete,” he said.

As for the retail side of business, the lender is working on building an end-to-end digital lending platform which is expected to be functional by September 2022. The board has already approved a proposal to invest Rs 200 crore for developing a digital lending platform, Raju said.