Cashless in India! Your money and UX: where your interest is compromised

The Narendra Modi government has been pushing digital payments for quite some time now, especially since the time of demonetisation announcement. The government has been introducing various initiatives like making Aadhaar card mandatory for a list of services, etc. in order to make the country a cashless economy. While government has been doing it's share in making the shift to digitalisation, the banking system has also been encouraging citizens to adopt mobile banking via their apps. One of the main reasons to get into mobile banking app is make your financial transaction easier and flexible. A recent report called The Forrester Banking Wave, revealed customer expectations and how banks have been working towards making mobile apps friendlier to use. 

As per the report, consumers in metros have a high level of willingness to go for mobile interactions, making mobile the most important touchpoint for interacting with them. The vast majority of these consumers expect firms to offer mobile apps that can help them get whatever they want in their immediate context and moment of need.
Between 43% and 65% of customers of the banks evaluated in this report have used their bank’s mobile channel in the past three months.
 
To find out how well prepared banks are to meet customers’ expectations, Forrester reviewed the functionality and user experience (UX) of the mobile apps of seven Indian banks: Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank, IDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and State Bank of India (SBI).

Private lender ICICI Bank and Axis Bank mobile banking apps set a high bar by offering customers strong functionality and usability. However, other banks are not rising to the occasion: Their apps’ poor functionality and UX clearly indicates that they’re failing to meet customer expectations. 

Forrester’s detailed analysis of 35 functionality and 29 user experience criteria uncovered best practices in many categories. Overall, the report found that, ICICI Bank’s mobile app is among the world’s best. The bank went from being the fourth worst mobile banking app provider globally to having the best mobile banking experience — a great example of shifting from perfect to fast.6

ICICI shines with strong transactional, self-service, and product marketing features and outdoes its peers with exceptionally strong assisted-service features. The click-to-call button in the post-login view helps customers bypass the phone banking interactive voice response system and call the relevant banking team directly. 

Forrester says, “ICICI does an exceptional job of making payments intuitive by structuring functionality around the payee instead of payment type. It’s also very easy to search for registered payees by name using a common search field across all payees, internal or external to the bank.

As for Axis Bank, the Forrester report highlighted that the bank delivers strong functionality and good UX. Strong transactional and self-service features help Axis Bank serve its customers better. The bank has excellent product marketing, research, and application features. Axis customers may apply for a preapproved credit card or compare other cards and apply from within the mobile banking app. 

Axis Bank’s mobile banking app’s uncluttered appearance stands out among its peers, reducing cognitive load on customers and speeding up their work. The app also uses specific button labels, helping customers know exactly what action will follow when they click a button.

Money movement is among the most basic and important functions of any mobile banking app — yet only Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI, and IDFC Bank do it well. 

Kotak Mahindra Bank does a great job of helping customers view account balances, recent transactions, upcoming bill payments, outstanding credit card balances, term deposit rates, and other information before login. It helps customers easily differentiate between withdrawals and deposits by not only showing them in different colors, but also clearly prefixing withdrawals with a minus sign. 

Meanwhile, SBI’s app has an uncluttered look and feel. IDFC’s app offers helpful contextual in-screen information for entry fields.