We all know the feeling. You just enjoyed a great dinner at a fancy restaurant with your friends when the worst part of the evening arrives: the bill. Should you all pay individually? No, the waiter won’t like it when all ten of you want to pay your own part by card. Should one person pay €400 by himself and wait for the others to pay? No, this is also inconvenient. There is always that one friend who ‘forgets’ to pay or ‘does not have money right now’ causing you to be broke before the end of the month. Luckily, the Dutch bank ING has the solution: Twyp.
Twyp is a new application by ING which allows you to split the bill and send a payment request to your friends on the spot by means of your mobile phone contact list. Your friends can immediately accept your request and pay the correct amount by confirming their identity through a pin code. It’s easy and quick! And this is only the first step towards future banking.
Due to the competition of FinTechs traditional banks feel the pressure to innovate at a rapid speed and offer their customers services which are not necessarily part of banking, but related to it and especially a luxury attribute. An example of this is the possibility of external apps to integrate the regular ING application or customer banking details in their application in order to improve customer experience. Nobody likes payments, so the easier it gets, the better. The same theory applies to entrepreneurs which will have the possibility in the near future to pay their bills within one click by ‘sending’ them to their bank.
It is clear that the above examples make life easier. However, they are also related to providing sensitive banking details to external parties. What effect does this have on security and peoples trust in their bank? On top of that, will it be enough to stay ahead of the FinTechs?
