Banking on smartphones
Introduction
The development of the technological field from the era of industrialization has always led to better banking and service delivery to the customers. Over the past, most banking customers had the duty of walking to their respective banks in case they needed any bank-related activity. However, walking to the banks did not guarantee them of meeting the actions that they wanted to accomplish. In most cases, they would meet long queues ahead of them or just finding an automatic teller machine broken down and/or short of funds making their banking experience be on its worst. Thus, this essay shall be looking at the role that technology, through banking on smartphones, has aided the customers and eased their banking experience. Particularly, the paper shall look at the information that these customers love to access through their smartphones and other mobile gadgets.
The information that customers access through smartphones
Their bank balances
In the 21st century, many people are busy with other personal or professional duties in their respective places of work. As a result, walking to the bank may be a big challenge to them if they are busy from morning to evening. It is for this reason that most customers will look for simpler ways of accessing their bank balances through their smartphones at any time of the day or night (Laukkanen, 2017).
Customers’ loan and credit score
Many people nowadays open the personal and business bank accounts for the purpose of saving their income and later using it to access their credit score. In most cases, the more the customer and/or a business deposits and withdraws from the bank, the higher the credit level they may have (Laukkanen, 2017). Thus, most customers aim at using smartphones as a simple way of attaining this information without ever stepping on the bank facilities.
Bank transaction statements
As described in the above section, the more a person deposits and withdraws, the longer the bank statement becomes. Traditionally, people would visit their banks and issued with huge statements printed on papers that was a security concern whenever such information would be attained by a third party. However, most customers simply access this information through mobile banking where they are issued with their statements in a softcopy paper format such as a PDF file format. To address the security concerns, the softcopy files are always encrypted with a password or any other information that only the bank and customer know.
New or existing transactional or loan interest rates
Customers may want to borrow a loan for either personal or business reason but due to the knowledge gaps in the interest rates, the process becomes difficult. Additionally, the cost of sending money varies from one bank to another (Laukkanen, 2017). As a result, most customers prefer using the mobile banking services to know the rates that they may be expected to pay if they use a particular transaction. Without the mobile banking, it would be tiresome to walk to the bank facility just to know the installed transaction rates.
New services offered by their banks
Finally, most customers would love to experience new features and the banking services that come with mobile baking. For instance, most banks promote mobile banking by allowing customers to pay less if they use mobile applications. As a result, most customers may simply access the mobile banking services just to enjoy the new features that are available on the mobile rather the traditional banking services (Laukkanen, 2017).
Customers’ concerns on the screen sizes
However, offering, almost, every banking service on the mobile gadgets may be technologically advance but it has limits too. For instance, most customers who access these mobile banking usually face the problem with the little screens. Almost every smartphone in the mobile industry has a screen of either 6 inches or less. Comparing such a screen size with that of a computer that is 14 inches or more, vision issues arise. Most customers may have poor sightings with the smaller application icons, smaller fonts, or even unease of understanding where some services are located. As a result, most people, particularly the aged, may experience a poor mobile banking service due to the smaller screen size. This is one of the reasons why many customers across the globe have embarked on using computers and laptops to make their transactions as they have better display and ease of service access than the mobile applications.
Strategies for incorporating smartphone transactions
There are several methods that may be used in integrating the smartphones transactions into a business’ infrastructure. These strategies may include the following. To begin with, the business must ensure that it has put data-secure incentives across all the smartphone devices, cloud, and networks. Apart from the issue of small screen sizes, security has always been the first priority that customers have had and keeps them from fully exploiting the benefits of smartphone mobile banking activities. In addition, the transactions that occur over the cloud must be secure for the transactions to be included into a business’ platform. Secondly, the platforms that the businesses have must be flexible to ensure that the development of the smartphones’ mobile applications is easy. Also, flexible platforms improvethe elements that the mobile transactions entail including testing, performance analytics, catalogs for the applications, and lifecycle management. Finally, the mobile applications that the business may be willing to utilize in its platform must move beyond the pretty visualization to transactional purpose. If the application cannot access the data that a customer wants, then it is a sure bet that the customers will never consider using the application. Thus, the business must ensure that the applications can perform their purpose so as to include all the transactions that the customers may make (Glaser, 2017).
Language necessary for the above transactions
In the current software development world, there are many languages that any developer or business may consider using in the development of its application. Particular, the features and syntax of the language matters. One of the traditional languages that has a wide application in the mobile application development is Java. Java is considered because of its security features such as the lack of pointers unlike its close associate C++. However, the syntax of Java is typically massive and may be tiresome for some developers. Due to this fact, many businesses and developers will consider using Python for the job. Consider the below syntax when a simple statement is needed in an application:
JAVA
classApp{
public static void main (String args []){
System.out.println(“Insert your name, here!”);
}
}
PYTHON
// this program is the same as the above
printf(‘Insert your name, here!’)
Thus, the syntax will always matter in the application development. Finally, C++ may be considered if the business or developer would want to access the root of the device. It may be considered since it is considered a parent to the evolution of Java (Mota, et al., 2018).
Conclusion
The improvement of mobile technology has resulted in the better service delivery to the customers in the banking industry. However, the issues of security and smartphones’ screen sizes among others have been an issue in meeting these objectives. The languages used in the application development may vary depending on the security, syntax, and object-orientation that the business or developer may consider.
References
Glaser, F. (2017). Pervasive decentralization of digital infrastructures: a framework for blockchain enabled system and use case analysis. 01.
Laukkanen, T. (2017).Mobile banking.International Journal of Bank Marketing, 35(7), 1042-1043.
Mota, J. M., Ruiz-Rube, I., Dodero, J. M., &Arnedillo-Sanchez, I. (2018).Augmented reality mobile app development for all.Computers & Electrical Engineering, 65, 250-260.
