How IoT Driven Beacons Can Change the Face of Banking

At a time when enterprises are looking forward to incorporating innovative means to carry information towards their end customers, Internet of Things or IoT driven Beacons are increasingly getting important, especially for retail banking segment.

Beacons are small, low cost pieces of hardware whose primary functionality is to transmit critical piece of information or prompts to smartphones or tablets based on their location. As a result, Beacons are ideally placed to help drive mobile commerce ahead on a path to greater success inter-linking the digital and physical worlds of banking and eventually helping banks derive better value for their customers.

IoT: Beacon in Retail banks

In current times when banks and other financial institutions are trying to find new ways to change the economics of customer interaction and create an edge over competitors by means of new innovative products and services, BEACON could completely change the way customers interact with the bank.

“With digital services becoming prevalent across Retail Banking and Financial services sectors, expectation of the end consumer is to have personalized experience across all touch points – Physical and Digital Banks and Financial institutions have been able to parallel the personalized digital experience offered to customers across all touch points, which has led to potential loss of revenue towards newer offerings.

Beacon Banking bridges this gap by bringing Physical world into Digital using IoT and empowers them to become proactive.

The moment a customer walks into the branch of a bank, the bank will be able to recognize him/her, bring up relevant information with the teller or bank manager or relationship manager and equip them to offer proactive & personalized services. Thus empowers banks and financial institutions to engage with customers beyond the transactional activities of payment and account balance inquiries.

It also enables banks to open up an additional revenue source by delivering offers from brands and merchant stores when customers are near respective affiliation and be prompted to pay with that particular institution’s card,” explains, Madhivanan Balakrishnan, MD & CEO, 3i Infotech.

Contextual Data Delivery - Customer discovery, identifying context and delivering relevant information to customer at the right time will empower banks to completely change customers’ experience.

Contextual Data Delivery framework coupled with strong analytics, empowers banks to guide customer’s journey during their branch visit, deliver campaigns and offers only when they are near respective affiliation, etc.

“IoT in Banking is a very unique phenomena for domestic banks. Currently we are doing trial / POC for one of the private banks in India. Number of multinational banks in APAC region have shown interest in this unique proposition and discussion has reached to an advanced stage.
We expect IoT to play a vital role in next generation of digitization across industries. Banks and Financial institutions have been one of the biggest consumers of emerging technologies. Considering this we see multi-fold growth in this financial year for IoT practice.” Madhivanan Balakrishnan, MD & CEO, 3i Infotech adds on.

Beacons Changing the way customers bank

Most banks would like to provide personalized services and offerings whenever a customer is around and not be faced with the late discovery of customer visit and lose out on an opportunity of personal interaction. BEACON enables your branches to be able to virtually assist customers within the branch and empowers your bank to materialize customers' visit via personalized offers and service delivery.

As customer walks into a branch, personalized welcome message is delivered with their account balance, informs relationship manager about the customers' presence in the branch along with customers' complete portfolio. A list of services offered by a branch would be displayed and put him in a respective servicing queue, delivering special offer reflecting customers' personal bank history and net worth.

Beacons can also help banks run location aware banking campaigns which are personalized for their customer’s preferences and banking behavior.

Welcome Message & Account Balance

As customer enters a branch, BEACON can deliver a welcome message and account balance to the customer.

Real-time Customer Identification

Customers are identified when they enter the bank, and a Relationship manager or Lobby manager is notified along with complete portfolio and banking history of a customer.

Branch Queue Management

When a customer enters a branch, BEACON provides a list of services offered by a branch, shows availability and wait time for services and allow customers to select one & put customers in Beacon Service Queue.

Personalized Product offers

Offers based on customers' previous activities, portfolio, demographics and even credit score can be sent to customer during wait time within the branch. This could allow dynamic pricing of services or rewards based on customer's current relationship.

Location Specific Service

If customer is standing at deposit counter or opts for deposit service while entering branch, BEACON could send a notification (along with introductory video) related to remote capture services.

Branch Analytics

With BEACON, it understands which customers are using which branches, how long on an average are customer spending in branches and what type of services are being availed. Your bank is able to use data for cross-channel attribution tracking.

Beacon enabled ATMs

For customers who have authorized mobile device for ATM communication, withdrawal could be done with beacon's assistance. This could eventually replace the need to use card to access the ATM. Send account balance notification on ATM entry and save receipt printing cost.

Co-branded Wallet & Passbook

Deliver coupons, offers, membership cards & gift cards, using BEACON basis customer's location. BEACON activates wallet / passbook and brings required coupon up front even when device is locked. Deliver products when it's needed and in the form it's needed.