ICICI Bank, India’s largest private sector bank, today announced the launch of banking services on Twitter. Christened, ‘icicibankpay’, the first-of-its kind service in India enables ICICI Bank customers to transfer money to anyone in the country who has a Twitter account. Apart from this, the service allows Twitter users to check account balance, view last three transactions and recharge prepaid mobile in a completely secure manner.
ICICI Bank, which is already hailed as one of the most social friendly banks has now become World’s first bank to open up banking services through Twitter.
How ICICI Twitter Banking Works
Any ICICI Bank savings account customer, who has a mobile number registered with the bank and has a Twitter account, can access the facilities of ‘icicibankpay’. The best part is a ICICI Bank customer can send money to anyone in India even if the recipient does not have an ICICI Bank savings account.
To register for the service, a customer needs to follow the Bank’s Twitter account, @ICICIBank and send a Direct Message (DM) in the following format
#reg<space><registered mobile number with ICICI Bank>.
For example: “#reg 9822XXXX”
As a safety measure, the customer will receive a ‘one time password’(OTP) on their registered mobile number, which in turn is required to be sent as a DM from the Twitter account to the Bank’s twitter account in the following format.
“#regotp<space><OTP>”
Once registered, the customer can transfer funds, check account balance, view last three transactions and recharge prepaid mobile by simply sending a DM from her Twitter account to the Bank’s Twitter account in the following formats
ICICI Twitter Banking heavily uses hashtags to carry out various transactions. Registered users can view account balance by using #ibal, view recent transactions by using #itran and recharge prepaid mobile using hashtag #TopUp
You can get more details on ICICIBankPay here.
Rise of Social Banking
Banking is going social in a big way – Many Indian banks are trying to integrate their banking services with Social platforms. Couple of months back, Kotak had launched world’s first Facebook based instant funds transfer platform, KayPay.
There is a reason why Social Banking is taking off in a big way – Most of Bank’s targeted users are already on Social platforms like Twitter / Facebook and they use it actively on daily basis on their smartphones. Banks understand that if they can seamlessly integrate themselves and offer services on platforms their targeted users are comfortable with, the usage will increase.
Banking has always looked upon as a chore till recent times, but with Banks now embracing technology and evolving, banking has become a much more pleasant experience.
ICICI Banks Executive Director Mr. Rajiv Sabharwal’s statement at launch of Twitter banking points to this fact, he said, “With the growing prominence of social media in every-day life, we believe our customers would be delighted to have yet another avenue which allows them to bank while they are on social media. ‘icicibankpay’ will help our customers to execute banking transactions while they are socialising on Twitter. This innovation is in line with our philosophy of ‘khayaal aapka’ wherein we offer products and services which make banking easier and more convenient for our customers.”
If you are an ICICI Bank customer and next time you want to know balance on your account or send money to your friend, try it out. Let us know how was your experience!
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