DUBAI 9 June 2019: Banking services on WhatsApp, the world’s most popular instant messaging application, have been brought to the UAE by Mashreq Bank, one of the leading financial institutions in the UAE. The solution will allow existing as well as potential customers to interact with the bank quickly and easily.
This latest innovation provides customers with another communication platform to communicate easily with the bank for services and information, in addition to similar solutions, which launched on Apple Siri and Facebook Messenger in 2016.
This instant messenger-banking channel will primarily assist customers through an interactive chat-bot, 24 hours a day. With enhanced language understanding, the bot will keep conversations as natural as possible. Human representatives can take over a bot conversation if required; customers can also choose to chat with human banking advisor at their discretion.
Bank Chat
Customers will be able to chat with the bank to check their account balance, latest transactions, foreign exchange rates, as well as apply for products and find nearby services such as ATMs or branches. They will also be able to submit service tickets for complaints and suggestions and connect in real-time to a human representative from the bank if required. The application will continually evolve based on user needs and bank’s strategy to offer intuitive banking services.
Subroto Som, Executive Vice President, Head of Retail Banking Group, Mashreq Bank said: “In this rapidly evolving digital landscape, it has become imperative for institutions to have capabilities for seamless instant communication with customers. At Mashreq, we have seen a significant shift in consumer habits, with numerous customers shifting to online and mobile banking channels. By leveraging the world’s most popular instant messaging platform, we will be able to support customers on a real time basis, wherever they are and whenever they want.”
Aref Al Ramli, Head of Digital Banking and Innovation, Mashreq Bank, said: “These banking services are based on WhatsApp for Business. The platform uses smart software interaction in response to user selections, making the chat service easy and simple to use for the customer. The application is capable of sending notifications to users in various forms; such as text messages, visual rich images, map locations and account statements, among others.”
The on boarding process is extremely simplified and does not require complicated steps or enrolment, to use this service, existing customers or new to bank customers have to visit https://mashreq.com/WhatsApp to use the services.
