Banking digitalization: “Without going to the bank”

Recently, the digitization of banks has been put at the center of attention of public opinion and has attracted increased attention from private and public structures. Briefly some explanations for the digitization of banks for anyone who wants more knowledge to judge for themselves.

Digitalization of banks, in a practical sense, means no longer going to a bank branch or a physical unit of the bank. This means that you:

  • To open an account without going to the bank
  • To make national or international bank transfers, as well as various payments, of any type of service and/or goods, without going to the bank;
  • To sign bank documents, and contracts, for loans or deposits, without physically going to the bank;
  • To pay obligations to the state, taxes, VAT, health and social insurance without going to the bank;
  • Paying for utility services: energy, water, telephone, fines without going to the bank;
  • To exchange currencies without having physical money in your hands and without going to the bank;
  • To check the balance of your accounts at any time without going to the bank;
  • Paying for public services without going to the bank.

In all of the above, the phrase ” without going to the bank ” is not a slip, but the essence of what digitization accomplishes. So, technology gives us the possibility of reaching the bank from any place, at any time, for any need, without wanting to know where the bank branch is, whether it is open or closed, whether there is a queue or not.

For a bank to be called fully digitized, it must close the full cycle from opening an account to completing the entire list of services it offers. Seen like this, today the following transactions are not carried out in banks “without going to the bank”:

  1. Remote account opening;
  2. Carrying out international transfers for business and partially for the individual;
  3. Electronic signature;
  4. Payment for public services.

At the moment when these parts of the bank’s basic activity are also closed, then we can say that the bank is fully digitized and it remains, as the case may be, to improve certain procedures to carry them out without physical presence.

The fact that intensive work is being done on these four aspects (somewhere for the clarification of the legal and regulatory framework, and somewhere for an institutional coordination and cooperation) does not mean that the digitization of banks is backward and that banks have not been at the vanguard of the technological revolution. Because all the other services above are performed today “without going to the bank” and with complete security.

Let’s not overlap the possibility and solutions offered by the bank for remote payment with the reluctance of some customers who continue to prefer the bank’s physical branch to perform these services and who create queues, to say that banks “are behind with digitalization”.

Without going to the bank agree, but how then? Use every opportunity created by the bank: by activating the e-banking application on your mobile phone, connecting to the Internet from a computer, using a debit or credit card where there is a physical or virtual POS, using ATMs.

Make your own effort to bring the bank where you are!

By Dr. Spiro Brumbulli