Tochka, an online bank for Russian SMEs has hooked up with Facebook Messenger as a new customer communications channel.
The Otkritie Financial Group subsidiary says the service enables clients to use the Messenger service to check their accounts, find nearby ATMs using geolocation, call the bank, contact customer support and make payments
Over 12,000 clients used the bot on the first day, says Tochka Bank chief Boris Dyakonoy, and 50% of those initiated a payment from the app.
“Almost all our clients are Facebook users solving their business issues, finding business partners and even conducting transactions through this social network," he says. "That is why, within a couple of days after the API was ready, we developed a solution to seamlessly combine the Internet banking, prompting and human interaction capabilities into the familiar Facebook Messenger interface."
Facebook says that every month, over 900 million people around the world communicate with friends, families and over 50 million businesses on Messenger. It’s the second most popular app on iOS, and was the fastest growing app in the US in 2015.
Bank of America, TD Bank and AXA were among a dozen companies who signalled their support for the Messenger Platform launch at Facebook's FS Developer conference in April when the API was released.