ICICI Bank, the first to enable payments and banking from a smartphone keyboard

MUMBAI: India’s most popular banking major ICICI Bank has unveiled Asia’s first payment service using a smartphone keyboard. Christened as ‘iMobile SmartKeys’, it is a pioneering feature that enables ‘iMobile’ users to make quick and secure payments on any mobile application including chat, messenger, email, games or search browser without having to exit their current application in their smartphone. This is in lieu of customers having to switch tabs or applications within their smartphone to access ‘iMobile’. The bank states that this new initiative provides the convenience of completing transactions in lesser steps than earlier, thereby reducing the transaction time.

The ‘iMobile SmartKeys’ solution is developed by one of the winners at the ‘ICICI Appathon’, the country’s largest virtual mobile app development challenge that was organized by the Bank earlier this year. As a testimony towards nurturing young developers, ICICI Bank has also incorporated this solution into its mobile banking app within a quarter of the completion of ‘ICICI Appathon’.

Using ‘iMobile SmartKeys’, customers can transfer money to their registered beneficiaries, pay their utility bills as well as recharge their mobile numbers, which are classified as ‘Favourites’ in their iMobile app. They can access the ‘iMobile SmartKeys’ by long pressing the ‘globe icon’ on their smartphone keyboard while they are chatting, gaming, browsing the internet or even sending mails. This allows them to make payments without having to exit the current application and launching another tab. Available currently for iOS phones, this innovative feature will soon be made available on the Android Operating Systems (OS) as well. In phones with Android OS, customers can simply shake the phone while they are on any application screen to change the keyboard to ‘Smartkeys’.

Commenting about this launch, B Madhivanan, Group Executive and Chief Technology and Digital Officer, ICICI Bank said, “ICICI Bank has always leveraged technology to pioneer digital innovations and provide world-class banking experience to its customers. Many of our innovations were path breaking initiatives even globally for instance banking on Facebook & Twitter & Voice based recognition to name a few. We are delighted to introduce ‘iMobile SmartKeys’, which is a testimony to our continuing co-creation initiatives with innovative technopreneurs. We believe that this feature will deliver an unparalleled banking experience to our customers by enabling quick and secure payments without having to switch any tab or applications within their smartphones.”

He also said, “With India becoming the second largest market globally in terms of mobile subscribers as well as smartphones, we are witnessing a paradigm shift in consumer preferences towards doing everything ‘on-the-go’. This new service further resonates our effort at bringing in path breaking solutions, making mobile banking simpler than ever before. We will continue the model of co-creating with quality start-ups & technology companies to deliver innovative products and services to our customers.”