Indian based private lender, Federal Bank has tied-up with UAE based Mashreq Bank to facilitate money transfers from UAE to India. The partnership is supported by Mashreq’s faster payment product, Quick Remit which was launched in 2017. Mashreq has a presence in twelve countries across Europe, US, Asia and Africa.
Shalini Warrier, Executive Director, Federal Bank said, “We are excited about the partnership with Mashreq bank PSC, UAE, to provide a cost effective instant money transfer service from UAE to India. With a market share of 17% in personal inward remittances to India, we have been always at the forefront of ensuring our remittance business is testimony to our mantra.”
She adds, “Digital at the fore, human at the core”. A fully end to end automated solution will ensure that customers get the benefit of instant transfers in a safe & secure manner and the Indian diaspora in the UAE will surely benefit from this.”
Federal Bank is one of the leading players in the inward remittance space with around 90 remittance arrangements across the globe.
Tooran Asif, Executive Vice President, Head of Consumer Banking at Mashreq Bank said, “This partnership with Federal Bank comes at an important time, as the growth of the UAE remittance market improves and begins to return to pre-pandemic levels. In particular, this tie-up will help to support our popular QuickRemit service to strengthen our India corridor which has grown significantly over the years – and providing our customers with fast, on-the-go solutions to transfer funds instantly and conveniently to their home-country – an imperative in today’s highly digitalized environment.”
Fi said it has been established with a strong purpose to help people get better with money and to create an intelligent bank layer that helps millennials understand their money, save more and spend intelligently.
It intends to offer an interactive, personalised, and transparent digital banking experience. Users gain access to a new-age savings account and money management tools with features that help users know their money, grow their money and organise their funds. Fi aims to assist a consumer’s financial journey beyond digital payments to other services — insurance, lending, and investment opportunities.
Shalini Warrier, Executive Director, Chief Operating Officer and Business Head – Retail, Federal Bank said, “We are delighted to be the sole partner Bank for this innovative neobank, Fi. The entire proposition brings together the best of what both entities have to offer. The slick customer experience via the app is complemented with the stability, safety and technological prowess of Federal Bank. We are confident that the salaried millennial will welcome this unique digital experience. The best of both worlds – fintech and banking – will be served on a platter to the customers.”
Sujith Narayanan, CEO & Co-founder, Fi, said, “We are excited to introduce a proposition that reimagines the way digital-first millennials perceive and interact with their money. Fi aims to be a meaningful partner in their money aspiration journey, enabling them to simplify finances and de-mystify savings.”
He added, “Our platform leverages cutting-edge tech and data science for deriving actionable insights that empower users to take control and do more with their finances. We look forward to delivering a first-of-its-kind, personalised, flexible and transparent banking experience and building long-term customer relationships.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has required industries across sectors re-evaluate and re-imagine their day-to-day operations, and the banking industry is no exception. From temporarily shutting down bank branches to redeploying the staff and provisionally suspending certain services to customers, banks have had to fast track digitisation and were under tremendous pressure to move services online and embrace digital transformation even in rural / semi-rural areas. In this time, with rapid changes in technology advancement and security needs, it is vital for sectors to keep updated on the latest and upcoming technologies to create the best and secured offerings. Innovations amidst protection and safety can lead us towards new revolutions, thereby helping us explore new tech integrations and cross-platform functionalities.
The proliferation of digital access has made the world more connected than ever before. Having flexibility to interface on their own terms anyplace, anytime is possible with the availability of technology at fingertip devices and global access points. As today’s complex digital environment continues to evolve at break-neck speed, privacy and security have become key concerns. It is often said that fraudsters are sometimes multiple steps ahead of service providers! When dealing with hard earned money, needless to add, the demands on privacy and security get heightened. Therein comes the role of safe, secure and convenient authentication.
Both banks and customers benefit as fingerprint, iris and facial recognition technologies become more mainstream in financial services. Stronger customer authentication, the ones including biometric technologies are rapidly becoming a part of the daily life of people around the world. In fact, one of the key reasons why biometrics made it to the top of mobile banking technology trends this year is that other security measures are losing their popularity among customers. Through integration with mobile devices, many interact with some form of biometric authentication daily. Interestingly, a lot has happened in the last couple of years to pique consumers’ interest in biometrics for payments. This has helped to not just familiarise consumers with biometrics but also encouraged them to favor biometrics over more traditional password or pattern recognition authentication techniques.
With multiple options available for biometric identification, banks should choose to mimic multi-factor authentication that requires users to provide a combination of biometric identifiers to reduce the chances of frauds even further. As popularly said, “One biometric doesn’t fit every situation”. For example, if at times while working in the kitchen or driving a car, finger authentication would be impossible, voice or face could easily and safely step in to enable convenience in banking transactions. The prevalence of digital banking and remote banking requires new and convenient ways to authenticate customer identity. Even though bank customers agree with the need for security, they do not want to undergo excessive authentication before they can accomplish the simplest transactions in their own account. With that kind of innovative, customer-focused thinking taking place at institutions across the country, it is clear that mobile banking is entering a new era of security and convenience.
Biometrics offer many advantages to both the financial institution and the consumer; some of them include, lower operational costs, avoidance of complex passwords and PINs, duplicate authentication, no possibility to exploit stolen information obtained from a malicious data breach etc. With multiple, distinctive, and measurable human characteristics that uniquely identify an individual, there is very little or no room for error in protecting this customer data and preventing it from becoming compromised or lost. It is in best interest of the banking and financial institutions to partner with market leaders in biometric technologies and security to ensure that biometrics in banking can achieve its potential and lead to a fraud-proof future.
In today’s digital world, biometric identification technologies are advancing quickly that it has become challenging to predict what they will look like in a few years. However, one thing that can be assumed quite confidently is passwords that were tricky to use, change, and remember will be a thing of the past. After a year of revving and redefining the engines, 2021 will be the year when biometrics in payments steps up a gear. It does have the potential to mitigate several concerns and challenges facing the payments world today.
The future of biometric security will lie in simplicity, universality, cost effectiveness and convenience.
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