OCBC and Siri to offer services for SME customers

This will be possible with the roll-out of a new feature on OCBC business mobile banking app that takes advantage of Apples Siri virtual assistant. Customers will also be able to speak to their phones that run on Apples iOS 11 operating system to make account balance enquiries.

For starters, fund transfers via Siri can be made only to business associates with an OCBC account. The voice feature will be extended to transfers to other bank accounts at a later date.

More than that, a new feature will allow fund transfers from the OCBC business mobile banking app to be made to other bank accounts via the Fast online interbank funds transfer system.

Its consumer banking customers have been able to instruct Siri to send money to a person in their contact list since October 2016. For instance, users say pay John Tan USD 50. The user will be guided to complete the transfer using the OCBC Pay Anyone feature in the OCBC mobile banking app. And the recipient does not need to be an OCBC account holder.

For business customers, however, the process is slightly different. For instance, the business user needs to tell Siri to transfer USD 200 from my business account or check my account balance. He will be prompted to verify the request with his fingerprint on the phone. For fund transfers, the user will then 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% from July 2015 to July this year, according to the bank. The number of enquiries to check business account balances via the OCBC business mobile banking app has also more than doubled since June 2016.