Vijaya Bank sees spurt in mobile banking

Post-demonetisation, Vijaya Bank has seen a spurt in balances in its mobile banking platform. Mobile balance is what customers load on their e-wallets, to make payments for small- and medium-value transactions.

Without quantifying the mobile balance, Kishore Sansi, MD and CEO of Vijaya Bank, said:“The bank has seen good growth over the last one year, thanks to demonetisation, which has speeded up use of the bank’s digital channels.”

“About a year-and-a-half back, when we started the process of increasing our mobile activation, we had about 46,860 registrations (as on March 2015). This improved to 5,05,000 (by March 2016), and today as we are talking, it has already touched the one million mark,” he added.

The bank has now set a target of one million active mobile banking users. “To facilitate this, we have launched an app, VPayQwik. All that the customer has to do now is to download it,” said Sansi.

“The VPayQwik app acts like a wallet and it means pay quick. This is how we are and were able to make a significant impact post-demonetisation,” he explained.

On the plan to have one million active mobile banking customers, Sansi said: “Already, about 80 per cent of them are aware of the app and our immediate target is to make them use it extensively. Also, we are continuously looking to acquire a lot of new mobile customers.”

According to him, the bank, on an average, is acquiring about 50,000 new customers a month. “The new customers who are joining the bank or signing up for mobile banking are given an instant activation kit.”

To keep pace with technology advancement, Vijaya Bank has launched the ‘E-Learning Solution’ to enrich the knowledge of its employees on the different facets of banking. According to Sansi, the solution enables the employees access different banking subjects virtually. “It is a self-learning programme and it empowers the employees to work confidently and diligently to effectively meet the aspirations and expectations of customers and also to practice risk management methods to mitigate banking risk in the future.”

With the infusion of a large number of young employees, the bank has taken this initiative to help them upgrade their banking knowledge anytime and anywhere.