While first-stage fintech is initiated by start-ups offering financial products in ways that the banks are unable to do, “fintech 2.0” is now moving towards collaboration between financial institutions, which have a larger customer base and strong capital, and tech firms, which are innovators.
This is a crucial platform that will become increasingly important, Teeranun Srihong, president of KBank and chairman of Kasikorn Business-Technology Group (KBTG), explained.
Regulators and state agencies globally are also acting as proactive partners to help empower the fintech, he said, raising the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) as a clear example of such partnership.
KBank itself has moved to the partnership model to ride the fintech 2.0 wave, supporting start-up Beacon Interface in the company’s development of a financial mobile application for the visually impaired.
The bank is a major shareholder in Beacon Interface.
Beacon has spent two months in developing the mobile app, which KBank has supported with technical tools and funding of around Bt1 million.
Teeranun said the bank agreed with Beacon’s aspiration of empowering the visually impaired to conduct financial transactions online with confidence.
The app has been created with a newly designed touch-screen interface, which both general users and the visually impaired can use with privacy, convenience, speed and security in alignment with KBank’ “inclusion” concept, wherein financial services must be delivered to all segments, he said.
Beacon submitted the financial app as currently developed to the “Singapore Fintech Festival 2016”, which hosts a global fintech competition sponsored by the MAS, in the hope that it would be recognised as benefiting society by providing equal access to technology.
The mobile app proved successful, winning two prizes last week at the festival.
Moreover, global banks such as Citi, Standard Chartered Bank, DBS and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group expressed interest in the application, Teeranun said.
The Beacon app will firstly be a |component in KBank’s mobile banking, for which it will be an add-on feature to its current offering, before being commercialised for wider use by such |banks and other financial institutions, |he added.
Somkid Jiranuntarat, vice chairman of KBTG, said the business-tech company hoped KBank would be the first bank in the world to launch a mobile-banking app for the visually impaired.
The application is still in the development stage, but is expected to be used in KBank’s mobile banking in the first quarter of next year, he said.
Teeranun said the bank would invest more funding in helping Beacon to develop its app for the visually impaired, as it could be used for both the financial and non-financial sectors.
There is also interest in the application in Laos and Indonesia, where a significant proportion of the population is unable to read or write and a mobile facility such as Beacon’s could help such people to conduct financial transactions, he added.