Bank notification service for smartphones

The service allows banks to send push notifications to their customers, dramatically reducing the volume of SMS messages sent out, and thus reducing operating costs. This service has been welcomed by banks, for which the SMS service, previously operated as an industry standard, was considered a costly legal obligation – for security reasons a federal law requires banks to inform their customers every time a transaction is made through their account. The cost of sending a push notification is up to 10 times lower than a traditional SMS message. It can be used for:

• Informing customers of approved and declined transactions.
• Sending special offers, one-use passwords, emails, news and promotions and notifications of a change in status to a document, as well as reports on transfers into and out of accounts.

The system includes the following components:

• Administrative interface for bank registration
• A high performance server
• API for receiving messages for mobile applications via push notifications for iOS, Android and Windows Phone
• SMS gateway to connect banks via HTTPS and SMPP protocols
• Mobile applications

Principle of operation

The bank sends the information to a server, which then relays the information as a push notification to the customer. This service is activated automatically as soon as the customer downloads the relevant app. An SMS message will be sent in following situations:

• The push notification is not delivered
• It remains unread for a specified amount of time
• The customer's phone does not support push notifications

The banks are not responsible for sending SMS messages in the event of non-delivery of push notifications.

The software architecture contains three main elements:

• The first is responsible for delivering SMS messages
• The second is responsible for delivery of push notifications
• The third relates to the client service element dealing with banks utilizing the service

The service was developed as a response to market conditions, with the mobile network providers increasing tariffs almost immediately after the law was passed requiring banks to send SMS notifications to customers. The service is offered as an out-of-the-box solution for banks, and is provided on a per-use basis. No profit is made where SMS messages are sent to customers, but with the number of mobile application downloads already over 100,000 there is clearly huge demand for the service from bank customers. Though they are not directly paying for the SMS messages, the ease of use of push notifications is a key factor in the early success of the newly established service. Sixty percent of push notifications are read immediately on delivery, with the remaining 40% duplicated as SMS messages.

Market penetration is a key factor for the success of the service in an industry where the most popular app has an 11% market reach. To address this, a parallel service for spending analytics using information from banks has been developed to entice customers to download the application. This provides customers with a budgeting service that:

• Requires no manual data entry
• Can show accounts, loans and deposits
• Updates in real time

A further reason this extra feature has been provided is to provide adequate competition against in-house push notification solutions currently under development by major banks.