Citi planning Facebook banking?

Global banking giant Citi has turned to the social media to gauge the public mood on offering banking transactions through Facebook — a service already being offered by Indian banking major ICICI.

US-based Citigroup attracted the attention of hundreds of people within minutes of it posting messages on social networking platforms, Twitter and Facebook, last night about banking services on Facebook.

“If you could do your banking on Facebook, would you?” Citi asked on its official Twitter and Facebook pages, evoking mixed reactions from the public, ranging from a straight ‘no’ to certain ‘yes’ and many guarded replies expressing concerns about safety issues.

While Citibank was non-committal on whether it was actually planning to offer banking services on Facebook, most of the replies to its message asked whether it would be secure to conduct banking transactions through a social networking platform like Facebook. The message was posted by Citi on its global Facebook and Twitter pages, but most of the comments appeared to have come from Indians.

Citi is known for having brought many innovations into the world of banking, including the advent of 24x7 banking through ATMs and various other smart banking offerings.

However, it seems to have lost the race to India’s largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank, when it comes to offering banking services through Facebook.

Earlier this year, ICICI launched its Facebook banking app, through which its customers could carry out banking- related tasks such as checking account details, getting accounts statements, upgrading debit card and cheque book enquiry. Also, it claims that checking account through the ‘ICICI Bank App’ on Facebook is completely safe and secure.