The new “DBS digibank” app delivers a groundbreaking “mobile-first” experience and builds on the bank’s continuous efforts to innovate on its digital offerings to enhance the customer experience.

For the first time in Asia, customers are able to view their account balances with a simple swipe on their mobile devices or Apple Watch. This function, called the “Peek Balance”, does not require any pre-login and customers can choose to “peek” at any of their DBS/POSB deposit or credit card accounts. The “account balance enquiry” function is the most used among DBS’ customers across the bank’s platform, including ATMs, online services and its call centre.

The bank went through an extensive customer immersion programme and applied human-centred design in the development of “DBS digibank”. In addition to the mobile app’s enhanced layout and more intuitive navigation, “DBS digibank” also offers customers some of these new features:

• Personalised profile and customised quicklinks - Customers can customise their own profiles with a picture or nickname, and can also create shortcuts for their favourite mobile banking services (First in industry)
• Payments made easier - Customers can use a list of recent and favourite payees for faster transactions (First in industry)
• Instant account opening - Customers can open an additional banking account with just a few simple steps
• Touch ID - Customers can log on to their account securely with their fingerprint

Said Pearlyn Phau, Deputy Group Head of Consumer Banking & Wealth Management, DBS Bank, “With increasingly tech-savvy customers and rising smartphone usage, we have designed our digital banking services to be innovative and nimble enough to address customer needs, and be able to provide an intuitive and relevant banking experience. It is about leveraging world-class technology to create a first-class customer experience.”

Since its soft launch on 14 March, “DBS digibank” has seen more than 200,000 downloads. DBS currently has the largest number of online banking and mobile banking customers in Singapore with over 2.5 million and 1.25 million users respectively, who account for over 1.2 million transactions daily across its digital platforms. The bank’s customer mobile activity continues to lead the industry in Singapore and mobile banking accounts for over 60% of the bank’s more than 500,000 daily logins.

Said Jeremy Soo, Managing Director and Head of Consumer Banking Group (Singapore), DBS Bank, “As a bank serving close to five million customers in Singapore, we are upping the ante on not just the breadth of our digital offerings, but also on providing a holistic customer experience across our platforms. We do this by placing ourselves in our customers’ shoes, focusing on their needs and ensuring we know what the real ‘customer job to be done’ is. With ‘DBS digibank’, we seek to seamlessly integrate banking into our customers’ everyday lives so that banking becomes simpler and fuss-free for them.”

As the pace of digital adoption increases, the bank is sparing no effort to deliver world class digital offerings to its customers. In December 2015, DBS also piloted digital account opening for new customers. With just a few simple clicks, new-to-bank customers can open savings accounts at their convenience, without having to visit a physical branch.

Right from the start of their banking relationships with DBS, from their day-to-day transactions and to assisting them with their financial decisions, the bank is committed to providing superior banking services to its customers. For new iBanking customers, they are able to access four other key digital banking services namely DBS PayLah!, mBanking, SMS Banking and eStatement in one activation. Previously, customers would have to sign up for each of these services separately. With the introduction of this new all-in-one digital banking onboarding service, customers are able to enjoy instant logins to their accounts.

In 2014, the bank made a commitment to investing SGD 200 million over three years in digital banking regionally and has since rolled out various initiatives to weave banking into the everyday life of its customers so that they can spend more time with their loved ones or doing the things that they care about. Some of these recent initiatives in Singapore include:

• DBS PayLah! - A mobile wallet introduced in May 2014 to make peer to peer payments easier, now has more than 300,000 registered wallets. The bank also brought this app to Apple Watch, making it the first wearable bank in Singapore
• DBS SMS Banking - In October 2014, DBS introduced SMS Banking, allowing customers to perform simple banking transactions including checking account balances, performing card payments and fund transfers to their own accounts outside of the internet banking environment
• DBS FasTrack - A first-of-its-kind app to be introduced by a bank in Singapore in September 2015, it provides a seamless ordering and payments solution for businesses while eliminating or drastically shortening customers’ wait time