Standard Chartered New App Breezes Into India
Breeze, the mobile banking app for which Standard Chartered Bank launched an Android app in June in India, was touted as having an especially well-designed user interface, so we decided to give it a closer look. “This is the first banking app in India that is specifically designed for small mobile devices,” says Aman Narain, group head of remote banking at Standard Chartered, who spoke with us from Dubai a week after the launch. “Our Singapore development team lives and breathes mobile,” says Narain. “We focus on benchmarking ourselves against the retail, gaming and entertainment spaces, which offer customers a truly rich mobile experience.”
In addition to standard mobile banking functions, Breeze lets users top up prepaid mobile accounts, purchase films and airline tickets, and write checks on smart phones. Customers can also transfer money to a Visa or MasterCard account. “Most people use this feature to pay down a balance on one of their own credit cards from another institution,” says Narain, “but you could also use this as a way to pay someone else.”
Standard Chartered is taking advantage of the form factor in the check writing feature of the new app. “You write the check on your iPhone or Android, which is almost the same size as your checkbook, and we cut and send the physical check for you totally free of charge,” says Narain.
Marc DeCastro, research director for IDC Financial Insights, says Breeze does seem to be taking the mobile banking app to a new level. “This is the beginning of the blurring between mobile banking and online banking,” says DeCastro. “The issue to date has been, quite simply, the form factor.”
The new version adds support for over 700 handsets, including basic Nokia phones. The bank partnered with Monitise to create the iPhone version. A Hong Kong roll-out is expected in July.
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