Social Media Banking!
Social media is more than just updating your status, sharing pictures and gossiping with your friends, relatives and followers. Social media platforms are the next big thing in business and even money transactions. The most recent and revolutionary addition to the social media platforms is the instant money transfers between friends and followers as banks and financial companies start to work in collaboration with popular social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. Sending money to a third party could now be just a short tweet away as social media platforms are embracing banking transactions to offer social banking at large.
Huge upside for Social Media and Banking Collaboration: The use of social media for bank transfers including international transfers in the future could act as a game changer in the international financial market. Several migrant workers and other individuals working away from their home countries sending a regular sum of funds back home almost every month. They can now do it with ease with the advance of social banking.
Companies who function as funds transferring agencies usually keep a small share of the transferred fund as transfer facilitation fee. As and when social media develops as an international money transferring platform, sending funds could not only become simpler but also far more cost effective as it would reduce the number of agencies involved in the transfer. With no third party agency involved the cost of international bank transfer between Facebook friends or contacts has a huge untapped potential taking social banking to an all new level.
Popular Social media Funds Transfer Services: While the use of social media platforms as social banking space remains a relatively new concept, there are various active collaborations between banks and social media platforms in place to facilitate funds transfer. Some of the popular social media funds transfer services include.
- KayPay- Facebook: Mumbai based Kotak Mahindra Bank has been one of the first banks to start social media funds transfer program in India. Kotak Mahindra Bank has collaborated with Facebook allowing users to send funds to people in their friends list. Named as KayPay, users opting for this service would not require internet banking to facilitate a third party funds transfer. Users can simply choose the person in their fiends list of Facebook and initiate funds transfer process. KayPay is a secure system developed on the immediate payment system which acts as a backbone to phone banking. KayPay uses Facebook user id and password to login and generates a onetime password to authenticate a financial transaction. The system generates a notification for funds transfer to both the sender and the recipient.
- HotRemit between Facebook and BBM users: Hyderabad-based mobility and payment gateway Digitsecure has initiated a social media platform funds transfer service allowing fund transfers between Facebook and BBM users. HotRemit uses a standalone Facebook application allowing users to facilitate funds transfer proceedings between contacts on Facebook and BBM messenger. HotRemit is working on its platform to come up with an iOS and Android based versions allowing funds transfer between Facebook and other social networks in the near future.
Twitter too to follow the trend in India
BPCE-Twitter: Groupe BPCE, France’s second largest bank has become the first bank in the world to come up with a joint collaboration with popular social media platform Twitter allowing funds transfer between users by simply sending out a tweet. The bank is offering person-to-person money transfers using Twitter for French consumers irrespective of the banks for both sender and the recipient. Payment by tweets will be managed via the bank’s S-Money service making it fully secures with text message notifications to both parties. The collaboration of Indian banks/ finance companies with Twitter is also much awaited.
Security Aspects of Social Media Banking:
As social media platforms look for innovative services for revenue generation, collaborating with banks and financial companies, this is likely to create a big impact. With most funds transfer applications are backed by strenuous data security algorithms developed by banks themselves, financial experts believe that sending money through social networks would in fact add a two layer security mechanism. Apart from the one time password generated at the time of money transfer as in the case of Facebook transfer, the system would also follow international security mechanism for online transfer at par with credit-card industry’s data security standards.
But as hackers are ever alert on inventing new ways and counter technologies, users now need to be extra alert in keeping the confidentiality and checking every movements you make it social media, even as adding new friends, if you are planning to make financial transaction through social media.