SMS Banking

SMS Banking is no new term for the people today. However, not all of us have used the facilities of SMS banking and hence are unaware of the amount of services it provides. In addition, most of us are unaware of any risks or the advantages of such a procedure. This blog entry will try to focus on those areas which are important in the view of the customer with a little bit of technological factors.

First of all lets us get to know the types of services we can get to experience through SMS Banking. These services are provided through 2 types of messaging technologies namely, Push messages and Pull messages.

Push messages
Push messages offer service without the customer sending a request for it. For example,

• If a sudden huge amount of cash withdrawal happens in the customers account
• Marketing focused advertisements
• Birthday greetings
• Reporting Salary/ other credits to the bank account

Pull messages
These messages offer services once the customer specifically requests it. Typically, the customer should be registered for these types of services indicating the types of alerts or reminders he/she wants. For example,

• Balance Inquiry
• Transferring of money between two of the customer's bank accounts
• Bill payments

The popularity of SMS Banking should be credited to the easy handling of bank related activities by the customer. Since mobile phone is one device the modern man is never seen without, conducting bank activities through SMS has gained immense popularity.

However, some of the risks attched to SMS based banking activities involve the insufficient amount of security of encrytion methods and SMS channels, compared to the security mechanisms used in ATM and Internet Banking. Nevertheless banks are trying to overcome this limitation by not offering high risk transactional services through this. In addition, using of  OTP or One Time Passwords is another way the banks are using to ensure the security of transactions.

No matter what the risks are, the convenience of SMS Banking methods are outweighing its negative points. Moreover it provides banks with a more efficient and fast way of notifying customers with any emergency situations such as fraudulent activities concerning the customer's account. Therefore, SMS banking tends to the next generations' choice of Banking.