OCBC introduces voice-powered mobile banking for Apple users

BY speaking to Apple's virtual assistant, Siri, OCBC Bank customers can now make instant e-payments and check their bank balances and credit card details.

In the latest version of the OCBC Mobile Banking App, customers can simply ask questions such as "Siri, what's my balance?" or "What is my credit card spend?". To transfer funds, they can tell Siri whom to send the money to and how much to send.

These transactions must then be authenticated with the customer's fingerprint or facial recognition.

The voice-powered mobile banking service was made available to OCBC's retail banking customers on Friday, having been rolled out to business banking customers in October 2017.

Developed by OCBC's in-house mobile developer and e-business teams, the service is available to OCBC customers with iPhones running at least iOS11, and using the latest versions of the OCBC Mobile Banking and OCBC Pay Anyone apps. Authentication using facial recognition is only available on iPhone X devices.

OCBC Bank's Singapore head of e-business, Aditya Gupta said: "This is just a start - we will continue to embed ourselves in our customers' everyday lives using voice-powered AI tools which they will be able to use for more banking transactions such as bill payments, money management and common servicing requests in the future!"