Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd., (KMBL) will soon enable its customers to get cross border remittances on the same day through blockchain technology.
Talking to The Hindu , Deepak Sharma, Kotak Mahindra Bank’s Chief Digital Officer, said: “We are one of the early banks to start saying blockchain can change lot of things in speed of transaction. If cross border remittance takes two days for money to move from Australia/Europe to a bank account account in India, how can we make it to happen on the same day? There are some pilots we are running in blockchains in two payment corridors there with some international banks and the platform.”
According to officials in the banking industry, blockchain works as an electronic payment ledger which is continuously maintained and verified in ‘blocks’ of records. The ledger is shared between parties on computer servers and protected from tampering by cryptography, doing away with the need for a central authority.
Asserting that blockchain is an underlying technology on which bitcoin was also found, he said: “The whole idea was how do we use technology for other use cases, which are relevant and then start building some strong experience. We are also started through innovation of partnering with a lot of fintech. We are in the process of pilot and are close to proof of concept testing.”
Seamless paymentBesides, Kotak Mahindra Bank is also on the verge of rolling out standalone Unified Payments Interface app that would enable customers to make everyday payments with a just a few taps on smartphone. The UPI system enables customers to safely and instantaneously transfer funds just like sending text messages.
Similarly, the bank is working with robotics and artificial intelligence to enhance customer experience.
Mr. Sharma also said India has leapfrogged into digital banking with the introduction of new features such as biometrics, e-KYC, digital wallets and e-lockers.
Mobile transactions
“We are in the cusp of building solution for the mass. Our mobile banking has overshot net banking transaction. Also one third of our customers are on mobile. In terms out of the total transaction, 55 per cent is on mobile and 45 per cent is online. In the last 12 months, we have seen 100 per cent growth in mobile transactions and in terms of share it has grown to 55 per cent from 45 per cent. The number of customers has seen 300 per cent growth over the last 18 months,” he said.
“Mobile is growing pretty fast for us and we are among the bank that has fastest growth on mobile adoption. By doing this, one can do transactions and services through mobile and walk into the branch for either for opening account or to get loan. The mobile adoption rate is uniform throughout the country be it metros or Tier-II or Tier-III cities,” he said.
