Mastercard and Payment24 are extending their engagement across Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (EEMEA) to help bolster security and drive innovation within the fleet and fuel payment industry across the region.

The EMV standard, now being implemented in over 80 markets, has dramatically reduced the incidence of counterfeit card fraud associated with magnetic strip cards, saving hundreds of millions in potential losses.

This partnership not only drives innovation in the fleet and fuel payments sector, but also aims to speed up the transition to the secure EMV standard and help fleet operators reduce the risk of fraud associated with magnetic strip fleet cards.

This expanded collaboration extends the geographical reach of a proven solution and delivers modern fleet and fuel payment solutions to banks and fleet card issuers throughout the region. While drivers benefit from a quick, secure, and seamless way to make payments, fleet operators can now monitor driver spending in real-time, set expense limits, and minimize the need for cash.

“By combining Mastercard’s leading payment technology with Payment24’s innovative and proven fuel payments platform, we deliver a solution for the region that enhances security and adds significant value and convenience for customers,” said Clyde Rosanowski, Senior Vice President of Commercial Solutions, EEMEA at Mastercard.

Through the partnership, customers will be able to take advantage of an end-to-end Fleet Management solution to help them rapidly deploy and scale their own secure fleet and fuel payment offerings. The offering is designed to deliver a suite of EMV-based payment products and extends to a host of modern payment mechanisms, including tokenized tags, e-wallets and vouchers that are all native to the Payment24 platform.

“We are exceptionally proud of how our partnership with Mastercard has developed. The expansion of this alliance to EEMEA highlights the urgent need to get ahead of fraud in the fleet and fuel payments industry. We believe that our combined offering will help customers in the banking industry to better mitigate risks associated with legacy technologies while enhancing transparency and flexibility,” says Shadab Rahil, Joint CEO of Payment24.

“Our deep understanding and tailor-made fuel and fleet technologies go beyond providing secure EMV cards. We deliver mobile payments, windshield tags for identification, and real-time tracking of vehicles and fuel via telematics, all integrated within a dedicated vehicle and fleet management platform. This allows customers to monitor fuel expenses and consumption and actively detect and prevent potential fraud,” adds Nolan Daniel, Joint CEO at Payment24.

Customers across the region can now be rest assured that each transaction is protected by Mastercard’s multiple security layers, fraud prevention technologies, dispute processes and underpinned by Payment24’s technical knowledge and in-depth understanding of fuel payment technologies.

By Dean Baker, Squad Lead, BFSI – Infobip

Conversational banking, sometimes called chat banking, refers to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and chat technology to help customers conduct traditional daily banking activities via digital communications channels on a mobile device.

Dean Baker, Squad Lead, BFSI – Infobip

Leveraging mobile messaging platforms, conversational banking has ushered in a new era of seamless and personalised banking experiences, tailored to meet the unique needs and preferences of each individual.

When conversational banking is delivered well, customers get both a more convenient and rewarding service experience. In other words, conversational banking leads to improved customer experience and ultimately improved customer loyalty.

Notably it has transformed how customers engage with their banks, providing a seamless and personalised experience using mobile messaging. However, a solid foundation for any conversational customer experience today is omnichannel communications, which is the ability to reach customers where and when they want, on their preferred channels.

Through chat apps, conversational banking provides instant, contextual, and personalised communication. Clients have the convenience of engaging with chatbots or agents 24/7 over a single platform where conversation history is saved for later reference.

An important aspect of banking is the ability to seamlessly shift the “conversation” to a human agent if and when needed while having the ability to present the engagement thus far to the agent, so as not to lose conversational context.

Conversational context

For example, should the customer have a question the chatbot cannot answer or if the customer gets stuck in the automation journey, they can be transferred to an agent with the conversational context, so the agent carries on where the conversation stopped, without the customer needing to explain everything all over again.

Choice is key and the caveat to an enhanced customer experience is to have the ability to deliver conversational banking over the customer’s channel of choice with the ability to move between channels without losing the context of the “conversation”.

One of the crucial customer benefits of conversational banking using chat apps is enabling customers to reach the financial institution whenever and wherever they may be. This will help build the trust required for successful long-term client-bank relationships.

The more a customer interacts with their bank through these conversations, the more a bank understands the customer’s preferences, habits, and needs – making it easier to personalise future transactional and promotional messages.

Conversational banking also brings various benefits to financial institutions, including speeding up time to resolution of queries or FAQs and automating the collection of data. Automation in call centres not only reduces costs but also enhances customer satisfaction, as customers who have a positive experience with a brand tend to report higher levels of satisfaction.

Revenue growth

Additionally, revenue growth can be driven through upsell, cross-sell and lead-generation efforts that can be personalised through conversational banking. Using conversational banking with AI-supported chatbots can also significantly reduce agents’ time spent on real-time support calls. Financial institutions can therefore support more customers with the same number of agents using chat apps. This reduces the pressure on customer service representatives and frees them up to handle more complex customer transactions.

AI technology plays a very important role in powering conversational banking experiences, as it enables chatbots to understand customer voice or text communications and to reply, simulating actual conversations. AI uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to allow chatbots to determine meaning from language through common data elements.

However, the key challenge for financial institutions to overcome when looking to adopt a conversational banking journey is to choose the right communications platform and partner. Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) and conversational AI should give organisations all the tools they need for a great conversational banking experience. However, the key is to be able to customise these tools to align with their unique use cases and understanding of what their customers want.

The disruption within the banking sector is evident, as seen by the remarkable growth of fintech startups that have multiplied sevenfold over the past five years. Traditional banks must recognise and address these emerging challenges to remain relevant and competitive by embracing digital transformation effectively and adopting innovative strategies and new technologies to position themselves to thrive.

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that mobile money operators including fintech firms like OPay, Palmpay, Kuda Bank, and Moniepoint will resume the enrolment of new customers “in another couple of months”.

Olayemi Cardoso, governor, stated this on Tuesday at the 295th Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the apex bank in Abuja when the MPC jacked up interest rate from 24.75 per cent to 26. 25 per cent.

Cardoso, said the apex bank has engaged many of the players on the need to strengthen their operations.

He said to block money laundering and illicit flows, the apex bank brought up “remedial measures that will help that sector to tighten up on onboarding and even existing clientele base”.

“I am confident that as time goes on, and hopefully in another couple of months, all these will be something of the past and then you will see that sector going back into what they’ve been known to do before, but certainly with a very stronger regulatory framework,” he said.

In April, the apex bank stopped fintech companies from onboarding new customers, a move that has been seen as a clampdown on the financial sub-sector by the Cardoso-led CBN.

When asked why the apex bank took the decision, the CBN chief said reports that the CBN has decided to clamp down on fintech firms are “furthest from the truth”.

He said “the fintechs have not been singled out for any exceptional kind of treatment”, adding that the CBN remained proud of the exploits of fintech firms in the last number of year and the apex bank would continue to support and strengthen them.

“However, regulation is very critical in a sector that seems to have grown so incredibly rapidly,” Cardoso said, citing illicit flows within the sub-sector.

“More recently, we had course to take a deep dive look at the whole issue of illicit flows and money laundering particularly within the non-heavy regulated banking system and we all know some of the issues that came out with cryptos and some of the messages we put out after that, which of course, gave us some course to know that there is the need for heightened surveillance.”

He said the apex bank has had major handshake with security agencies to identify the places to tighten regulations and surveillance in the sub-sector.

Cardoso said, “For that reason, we were concerned with respect to how we saw the issue of anti-money laundering and illicit flows as they made their way within the various sub-sectors of the financial industry and we felt there was a need for us to take a breather and work with different players to strengthen regulations, not by any means to throw them out of business.

“Let me re-emphasise that as at this point in time, we have not revoked the licenses of any of the fintech organisations.”