OCBC's business customers will be able to transfer funds by talking to Siri
Singapore's Smart Nation push saw a new development with OCBC Bank tapping Apple's Siri virtual assistant to allow businesses to transfer funds just by speaking to their Apple iPhone.
This will be possible with next Monday's roll-out of a new feature on its OCBC business mobile banking app. It is targeted at the bank's 120,000 small and medium-sized enterprises e-banking business customers. OCBC holds the lion's share of the SME business bank accounts in Singapore.
The app will also allow customers to make account balance inquiries through the virtual assistant.
For now, fund transfers via Siri can be made only to business associates with an OCBC account but will be extended to transfers to other bank accounts later.
Also from Monday, a new feature will allow fund transfers from the app to be made to other bank accounts. This cannot be done through Siri yet.
While the Siri option is new for businesses, the bank's consumer banking customers have been able to send money to a person in their contact list since October last year.
Business users need an extra step - verifying the request with a fingerprint on the phone.
For fund transfers, the user will be guided to confirm the paying account and select the payee from a list. An SMS one-time password must also be entered to complete the transfer.
The volume of e-payments among OCBC business accounts grew 33 per cent from July 2015 to July this year, said the bank. - THE STRAITS TIMES
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