| Danial Norjidi |
BANK Islam Brunei Darussalam’s (BIBD) branchless banking initiative allows anyone to have access to financial services without the need to physically go to a banking branch, as well as have digital payment capabilities.
This was highlighted yesterday during a press conference organised by BIBD, which took place at the Royal Brunei Recreation Club and was led by BIBD Chief Operating Officer Dr Gyorgy Ladics and BIBD Head of Retail Banking Hajah Nurul Akmar binti Haji Mohd Jaafar.
In a statement, BIBD shared that in creating an “Infinity of Possibilities”, BIBD through its BIBD NEXGEN platform supports Brunei Darussalam’s smart nation initiatives and Autoriti Monetari Brunei Darussalam (AMBD)’s digital roadmap to encourage and utilise a digital payment ecosystem to embrace a digital transformation that provides benefits to both users and payment service providers.
The statement includes comments from BIBD Managing Director and CEO Mubashar Khokhar, who echoed this commitment. “Whilst we have placed efforts into encouraging the adoption of a digital Bruneian economy via our own technologies that resulted in over 140,000 BIBD NEXGEN banking users, we remain cognisant we need to go further and evolve if we were to create more impact for a truly digital economy.
“In this belief while embracing our Bruneian at Heart ethos along with Brunei’s Whole-of-Nation approach, we started our collaborations with Progresif last May to launch Progresif Pay,” he said. “Today, we are taking branchless banking to another level by allowing anyone to have access to financial services without the need to physically come to a banking branch. This mobile convenience creates further inclusion for the expansion of a larger digital audience via partnerships with industries beyond the banking sector.”
“This first for Brunei is a collaborative effort that delivers on our commitment as Brunei’s economic partner of growth and empower other technologies with banking and payment capabilities for better financial inclusion through our branchless banking collaboration with telco partnership,” he added.
“This way, we are able to assimilate Brunei’s economy faster into the global digital economy that is expected to be worth over USD20 trillion by 2025.”
It was shared that BIBD’s branchless banking initiative will facilitate for enrichment of the wider customer experience, and will open up and make available the technology to all mobile users to allow for the improved adoption of a robust local digital ecosystem that will allow increased de-cashing with secure, innovative and documented digital payments.
BIBD also took the opportunity to introduce its latest innovation, BIBD NEXGEN Wave, which is aimed at narrowing the gaps towards a fully digitised and cashless society.
Using Near Field Communications (NFC), BIBD NEXGEN Wave will be able to interact with other international wallet and payment solutions such as Apply Pay and Google Pay in a global payment economy that is expected to be worth USD20 billion by 2020.
Dr Gyorgy Ladics said, “I’m happy to see the growth of the BIBD NEXGEN Wallet ecosystem that has grown to more than 14 million transactions in 2018 alone. This reflects the digital-readiness of the Brunei Darussalam public that has embraced the digital revolution at a very remarkable pace.”
“In taking this success further, our branchless banking proposition through our collaboration with telcos such as Progresif will seek to replicate this success onto a larger audience to benefit the wider public,” he said.
“Through branchless banking, our partnerships with telcos will extend and create a larger and more capable digital financial ecosystem that will provide the economy with a convenience that connects and unifies the customer base using multi-platform acceptance, benefit merchants with lowered set-up costs and reduced barriers of entry, and also safer and more secured transactions that are digitised and real-time.”
The Chief Operating Officer further added in the press conference, “We all believe that this is a platform and a success we need to ensure can be wider shared through a collaboration, especially with Progresif, we have the means and we have the ways to actually share this success to a wider audience, and we all believe that this partnership will make more success and more products available to all in Brunei.”
Speaking on branchless banking, he said, “It means that you don’t have to come to a BIBD branch to have access to basic financial services, and having digital payment capabilities. You can work with your telcos, you can work with Progresif, and everybody can have access to financial services and basic digital payment capabilities.”
Meanwhile, Hajah Nurul Akmar reiterated BIBD’s commitment towards its customers by saying, “We understand that in order to provide a richer customer experience, we need to go beyond providing our customers with the capabilities to digitally transact.”
“While our collaboration with our telco partners such as Progresif will enable any member of the public holding a mobile phone to have access to a full suite of banking and transactional services, we will need to also ensure that we have a marketplace for them to utilise these services and capabilities.”
She highlighted that BIBD’s partnership with DARe (Darussalam Enterprise) in the upcoming MSME Festival to be held at the BRIDEX International Conference Centre on March 28 “is part of our efforts to create a larger digital marketplace for our customers to engage and better understand the benefits of the services under our BIBD NEXGEN platform”.
“Over 100 merchants will have access to BIBD’s QuickPay and other payment solutions that will enable cashless transaction capabilities.”
Additionally, in further support of the event, BIBD will be showcasing its revised MSME account, which will focus on including more entrepreneurs to better understand and manage their business financials and also banking requirements.
This will also further reduce the challenges to entry into the business sector, whilst empowering local business to take control of their capabilities to maximise their growth potential.
It was also shared that the minimum opening of BND50 for MSME accounts is hoped to ease businesses in maintaining and managing their business costs and finances via a business account that will also facilitate their business transactional requirements.