Nigerian banks are taking more leaps to make banking easier and accessible to people. Guaranty Trust Bank (GT Bank) and UBA Bank are pushing their banking services onto the Whatsapp Business platform.
GT Bank announced yesterday that its services would be accessible through the Whatsapp Business platform. The Whatsapp Business platform is an enterprise companion to the popular social communication app, Whatsapp.
These banks should come together and integrate payments with Whatsapp not all these gimmicks. Nobody wants to chat with you bro | UBA, GTBank Take Banking Services to WhatsApp – THISDAYLIVE https://t.co/fBvDzIStWD
— tyro (@DoubleEph) August 2, 2018
Originally targeted at small businesses, businesses can create profiles, and quickly interact with customers easily by using tools to automate, sort, and quickly respond to messages.
Via this platform, GT Bank aims to avail its customers a new medium to make inquiries, service requests and access its other banking services. With this new frontier, the bank expects instant response and solutions to customer queries and issues.
At GTBank, we are passionate about driving constant interaction with our customers to learn more about how we can serve them better as well as to provide them with the financial solutions that can add real value to their lives. –GT Bank CEO/MD, Segun Agbaje
Agbaje added that “By leveraging the WhatsApp Business Solution, we are continuing to expand our service channels as part of our commitment to making banking, cheaper, faster and readily accessible to customers wherever and whenever they choose to bank.”
Leo continues to make giant leaps and strides and guess what’s up today!
You will now be able to access Leo on WhatsApp. The business is open and will be fully commercially available this September.
It’s such an exciting new development for us. See you soon on #WhatsApp 😉 pic.twitter.com/ny4aXqQ7s8
— UBA Group (@UBAGroup) August 1, 2018
Catching wind of the development, UBA is also determined to launch its own services on the Whatsapp Business platform. The bank announced that Leo, its banking chatbot, will soon be available on Whatsapp Business.
According to the bank, Leo is already operational on Whatsapp but will become fully commercially available by September 2018.
New Tools Coming to Whatsapp Business
It’s a bit surprising to see banks racing to launch on the Whatsapp Business platform today. The platform had been in existence since January this year and has about 3 million users. Yet, few Nigerian companies signed up for it.
That’s interesting. I think Nigeria’s most popular consumer app might still be Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram or Eskimi. Indigenous top one is probably a bank app probably GT bank app or Quickteller. @appannie can you help?
— Iyinoluwa Aboyeji (@iaboyeji) May 7, 2018
However, the recent interest in the platform may not be unconnected with a recent update announced on the platform.
Facebook, which owns Whatsapp, recently announced a new feature called Whatsapp Business API. The API provides a new way for people to quickly start a WhatsApp conversation from an ad on Facebook. It’s a pretty interesting feature.
When a user taps on a Facebook Ad connected with the Whatsapp Business API, they will be transferred to a pre-filled WhatsApp chat where they can message the business quickly.
With Whatsapp boasting of over 1.4 billion users, the feature could go a long way in improving business communication. And it could be important for getting users acquainted with new service offerings.
Apparently, both banks are prepping to take advantage of these new services.
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