Mashreq Bank, a leading financial institution in the UAE, has launched banking services on WhatsApp, one of the world’s most popular instant messaging applications.

The solution will allow existing as well as potential customers to interact with the bank quickly and easily.

This latest innovation by Mashreq 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.

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 Mashreq’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: “The solution re-emphasizes our leadership in the regional digital banking space and our constant endeavour to offering valuable services with a clear purpose behind every innovation we offer to our customers.

“These banking services is 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.”

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. – TradeArabia News Service