More and more customers are seeing mobile as their banking channel of choice, proven by a growing body of papers. To cite some, Cimigo revealed that for every 10 respondents who are Vietnamese consumers, 3 are using some forms of e-payments including mobile banking application and e-Wallet. Or Backbase predicted that mobile transactions in Vietnam will increase by 300% between 2021 and 2025, driven by mobile payments. As banks build more creative features and integrate with third-party financial products, mobile banking application is no longer a tool for remote money transaction; it has become a financial lifestyle platform that offers a single hub for all banking services. In this article, we get to explore various innovative features that a bank might consider for its mobile banking application, with the goal to keep up with the Digital Banking upsurge.

1. Must-have Features for
BANKING APPLICATION
Digital Banking

2. More and more customers are seeing mobile as their
banking channel of choice, proven by a growing body
of papers. To cite some, Cimigo revealed that for
every 10 respondents who are Vietnamese
consumers, 3 are using some forms of e-payments
including mobile banking application and e-Wallet. Or
Backbase predicted that mobile transactions in
Vietnam will increase by 300% between 2021 and
2025, driven by mobile payments.
As banks build more creative features and integrate
with third-party financial products, mobile banking
application is no longer a tool for remote money
transaction; it has become a financial lifestyle
platform that offers a single hub for all banking
services. In this article, we get to explore various
innovative features that a bank might consider for its
mobile banking application, with the goal to keep up
with the Digital Banking upsurge.

3. ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT
Account Management is the most basic and important
feature of mobile banking apps. Its purpose is to allow
customers to manage their finances at any time and in any
place. Smaller functions of an Account Management include:
• Balance check: displaying available balance. The app
should also let users hide/show balance to ensure both
quick access to information and privacy.
• Transaction history: displaying past transactional
activities and related information.
• Saved payment and quick payments: automatically
saving information of past payees to save time in future’s
transactions.
Recently, more useful functions for Account Management
have been created. One is Account Aggregation, a function
that lets customers integrate information from multiple
types of accounts and e-Wallets to view them in one banking
app. Built on top of Open Banking Architecture, account
aggregation allows for the integration of e-Wallets and
payment products of 3rd-party providers. Concerns related
to privacy and security are reduced thanks to PSD2.
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$859,42
Contactless Payment
Online Payment
ATM Widthdraws
Your Cards
Must-have Features for Banking Application
Must-have Features for Banking Application
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4. SECURE AUTHENTICATION
As banking apps work with users’ confidential information,
data security remains a top priority. A minor mistake could
lead to costly compensation, even lawsuits, and a permanent
scar on banks’ reputations. To avoid this disaster, banks have
added more authentication steps during app signup or
onboarding: One-time password (OTP), message
confirmation, encrypted PINs, alongside non-digital
methods such as paperwork submitted at branches. But for
users, too many of these actions prove frustrating and
time-consuming. To balance security and user experience
during app onboarding, banks could make the process faster
and more enjoyable. One solution is electronic
Know-your-Customer (eKYC) as biometric authentication.
Best practices for authentication in mobile banking app are:
• Encryption/hashing of all passwords and PINs.
• Using verified storage (Keychain for iOS or Keystore for
Android) to store PINs.
• Applying SMS confirmation during onboarding.
• Limiting login attempts, preferably five attempts.
• Leverage camera for the authentication of documents.
Enter PIN code
7 8 9
0
4 5 6
1 2 3
Must-have Features for Banking Application
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5. CHATBOT
Thanks to chatbots, customer service in banking has been
made much easier and much less costly. Unlike humans who
need sleep and downtime, codes don’t. The advantage of
chatbots over human staff is that they are always-on and can
provide instant answers to customers' inquiries. However,
many customers demand real human interaction. In a survey
by UserLike, 60% of respondents said they prefer talking to
agents than to chatbots. This is not to say that chatbots are
better than human agents, or vice versa; or that banks
should choose one and not the other. It is best to combine
both and integrate them into the mobile app.
On one hand, the chatbot should be intelligent enough to
handle more than if-else conditions. Fed with enough data
and algorithms, it becomes a virtual financial assistant
enabled with Natural Language Processing (NLP)
capability, and works more or less like Apple’s Siri or
Microsoft’s Cortana. And on the other hand, the app should
have an in-app messenger for users to chat or talk with
active human agents during working hours, instead of
forcing users to dial hotlines, which incurs unwelcome fees.
Virtual Assistant
Must-have Features for Banking Application
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6. ATM LOCATOR
An in-app integrated map or, in other words, the “ATM
Near Me” feature is a must for any mobile banking app.
ATM locator is essential because, even with an all-in-one
application boasting every latest feature in the market,
there are times when customers wish to drop by ATMs to
withdraw some cash or visit a physical branch for
paperwork. To ensure user experience, the integrated map
should have filtering capability so that customers can search
by keywords, and display the working hours of each
branch/ATM or related information.
A bank need not build an integrated map from scratch;
instead, it should leverage third-party geocoding APIs such
as Google Map. ATM
1977 Tran Hung Dao, District 1, Ho Chi
Minh City, 700000
Branch
999 Thao Dien, District 2, Ho Chi Minh
City, 700000
Must-have Features for Banking Application
04
ATM Near ME

7. BILL PAY AND BILL REMINDER
The convenience and swiftness of Bill Pay make e-Wallet
providers and other financial products so attractive to
customers. And banks should mimic this feature in their
banking app, allowing customers to make payments to utility
(electricity, water, network) providers. According to a Cimigo
report, 36% of surveyees are using e-Wallet and mobile banking
apps as non-card, non-cash methods for periodical bill
payments. In addition, banks should include in the app the
Bill Pay Schedule function. Its purpose is to let customers
schedule payments in advance in case they forget.
On one last note, it is optional to add the Bill Reminder
feature. Using Bill Pay, users are asked to input lots of
information about not only their bills but also their
behaviors. With this high volume of data, the banking app
can be intelligent enough to mine transactions and discover
patterns in user behaviors, thus providing simple reminders
of upcoming bills.
Total
$273.00
Water
$124.00
$149.00
Electricty
ID: 1997
ID: 1177
COMPLETED
Payment is completed for 2 bills
DONE
Print Report
Must-have Features for Banking Application
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8. Near field communication (NFC) is the very technology
behind mobile payment or the so-called contactless
payment.
Today’s consumers demand the ability to transfer money
from account to account (A2A) or from peer to peer (P2P)
instantaneously within their mobile app. A banking
application integrated with NFC allows customers to pay at
the registers of merchants such as convenience stores,
restaurants, coffee shops and such via a wave of the phone.
But the case for NFC in mobile banking apps is still not
convincing enough for many banks. The most obvious
benefit of NFC is that it helps to eliminate the use of cards.
Other than that, it saves just a little more time for
customers. Having said that, NFC holds a lot of potential for
banking and its use cases will be more numerous when both
banks and merchants become more NFC-sophisticated.
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Must-have Features for Banking Application
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9. In the form of SMS, emails, or pushed phone notifications,
the alerting features provide succinct and timely valuable
information to customers about successful transactions,
suspicious money transfers, low account balances, or
product updates. The messages can be automatically
pushed to customers, triggered by predefined events or
in response to customers’ inquiries.
Alerts and notifications let customers know that they are
cared for and kept informed of any new events. Alerts also
prove to help banks reduce on-hold times at call centers.
NOTIFICATIONS
ALERTS/NOTIFICATIONS
Today (1)
Yesterday (3)
Earlier (99+)
New update has been released
Check out now the Account Aggregation feature
• 2 hours ago
Your transaction has been completed
You sent $500 to Hue Nguyen
• 16 hours ago
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You received $200 from KMS Solutions
• 19 hours ago
Is this you?
We notice that you log in from another device
• 20 hours ago
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• 2 days ago
Must-have Features for Banking Application
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10. Spending helps users manage how their money comes and goes.
The mechanism is to describe the everyday spending behavior
of users by tracking their spending activities and displaying
them as dashboards or notifications. Personalization is the key
to the spending feature; it must be fed on quality data—users'
spendings, demographics, location, social interactions, etc—to
offer accurate insights.
• Spending tracking: listing all transactions, bills, and
subscriptions (say, Netflix or Spotify). This allows users to know
what they are paying for (and if they are not using any of that),
and how much they are paying for each.
• Saving: estimating an amount that users can set aside for
their saving accounts based on their cash flow and their
spending patterns.
• Insights: provides quick insights into customers’ financial
health in the form of dashboards or notifications. For example, a
simple pushed notification that reads "you have spent $12 more
on utility this month" would do. It should also offer personalized
recommendations on how customers can manage finance
better and spend smarter.
SPENDING
Must-have Features for Banking Application
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Bills Payments Subscriptions
Amount paid
$950of $2500
You have spent $50 more on
your utility this month
Go to trends
Utilities & Bills $300
Water
$40 of 125
Electricity
$85 of 175
$85 left
$90 left
$300
Auto & Transport

11. A loyalty program gives customers points when they create
new bank accounts or use certain services belonging to the
bank or its partner network. The points they earn can be
redeemed for various rewards such as discounts, travel
experiences, credit rate discounts, free withdrawals from
non-chain ATMs, etc. Such loyalty programs encourage and
incentivize customers to use banking services. It’s a form of
gamification in banking. In fact, 8 out of 10 modern banks want to
give incentives to customers in the form of loyalty programs or
signup bonuses, according to CGI's findings.
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Must-have Features for Banking Application
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12. Mobile applications are reinventing the banking sector, where, comically,
non-banking businesses are at the forefront. It’s time to change this paradigm.
Banks must reclaim the trust of customers with modern mobile applications that
engage and delight today’s mobile-savvy customers. A “just enough”mobile banking
app now goes beyond giving users the ability to transact money online. It’s now a
financial lifestyle platform, using which customers are able to handle everything
related to money.
To discover our latest thoughts on Digital Application Development, visit:
https://blog.kms-solutions.asia/best-practices-of-digital-banking-ui-ux
Must-have Features for Banking Application

13. KMS Solutions works closely with leading software companies across the
globe to bring the most advanced and innovative technologies to Asia
Pacific. The focus is to help organizations achieve their business goals
through world-class fit-for-purpose solutions and proven industry best
practices. KMS Solutions’ success is ultimately measured by the positive
impact that it makes to the client’s business.
To learn more about us, visit kms-solutions.asia