Business Desk, ETV Bharat: Expanding the scope of Whatsapp banking, India’s second-largest private lender ICICI Bank Ltd on Thursday announced that its customers can now open fixed deposits (FDs) by just sending a message on the chat platform.
Till now, individuals could just check the details of their existing FDs, like maturity date, amount etc, through Whatsapp. But with this launch, ICICI Bank has become one of the first leading banks to offer the service of booking new FDs through Whatsapp.
Apart from that, the bank said that retail customers can now also initiate payment of utility bills like that of electricity, water, cooking gas, mobile phone etc through the Whatsapp platform. The service for recharge of prepaid mobile phones will also be available shortly on WhatsApp, it added.
For corporates and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises), the bank said that it was testing trade finance services with select companies and will launch them widely on the messaging platform within the next few days.
“Corporates and owners of MSMEs can check trade finance-related services like customer ID, Import Export (IE) code, limit availability of all credit facilities availed from the Bank, status of pending inward remittances and history of inward remittances on-the-go,” according to an ICICI Bank press release.
With the launch of all these services, the total number of banking services available on WhatsApp for ICICI Bank customers would rise to 25 within six months of the launch of the platform.
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