Our digital literacy rate is very low but it is very important for digital banking, Syed Ibrahim Saajid, vice president and head of Citytouch of City Bank, said while discussing Citytouch, digital banking and cyber risk in the digital arena in an interview with The Business Post’s Mehedi Hasan.
The popular mobile banking application, which was the first of its kind to be launched in 2013, recently hit the milestone of 5,00,000 users.
Tell us a bit about Citytouch.
Citytouch is the digital banking platform of City Bank and also the first mobile banking application in Bangladesh. City Bank has always strived to add more and more banking features and products in Citytouch to make it a one-stop digital banking solution for customers.
Currently, Tk 200 crore worth of transactions are happening through Citytouch every day. This app allows customers to transact up to Tk 30 lakh every day.
Clients can avail of many transaction-related services like fund transfer to any bank account, fund transfer to major MFS wallets, mobile recharge, utility bill payment, Bangla QR merchant payment, cardless ATM withdrawal, etc.
What are the app’s unique features?
City Bank has always prioritised the security of applications used by its valued customers when developing any digital product. Citytouch ensures the highest level of Information security through multi-factor authentication for every transaction.
Citytouch is also a PCIDSS-compli ant application and it ensures that customer data is protected through end-to-end encryption.
Citytouch users can avail highest Tk 1 lakh as loans from the bank against their DPS (Deposit Pension Scheme) and FDR (Fixed Deposit Receipt) in the bank without any documents.
Our clients are not carrying debit cards. They can withdraw money from ATMs just by generating a code.
We introduced those features first and then other market players followed us. There are more than 100 features in our app which is very easy to use.
Till now, the bank has disbursed around Tk 2 crore as loans through the app. On the other hand, Tk 715 crore deposit mobilisation has happened through Citytouch.
Most banks are raising investment in digital services. What is City Bank doing?
We are also working to introduce new products and innovative features in the upcoming days. At the same time, we are working to provide digital literacy to our clients. We have spent 10 years in digital banking. We saw robust growth amid the Covid-19 pandemic as people were avoiding going to banks.
For example, yearly transaction through Citytouch was around Tk 18,000 crore in 2021 and the amount hit Tk 36,000 crore in 2022.
We want to bring new and modern technology to Citytouch. We also want to raise the quantity and quality of our services.
What are you doing to reduce cyber threats?
First of all, we always think about the security of our customers when we plan to introduce new products or services.
We are now living in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), where the whole world is going through rapid technological change. Banking, like all other industries, is also transforming itself.
Citytouch is keen to bring the benefits of Bank 4.0 to its users and eventually to whole Bangladesh augmented with artificial intelligence, machine learning and other essential cutting-edge modern technology to leverage seamless digital banking for now and the future.
Why is Bangladesh behind neighbouring countries in digital banking?
Digital literacy is very much important for digital banking. But our digital literacy rate is very low. However, digital literacy among people is now growing day by day. When it increases, the security risk will minimise.
The lack of digital infrastructure is another reason in this case. A good internet connection is also needed for digital transactions. Digital products like smartphones will have to be cheaper to make a cashless or digital society.
But this is good news that we are going forward so fast in digital transactions due to the policy support of our banking regulator.
The central bank recently introduced Bangla QR and Binimoy, an interoperable digital transaction platform, to facilitate digital transactions. Now clients can make payments by using any bank’s app and QR code with the help of Bangla QR.
