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THE BIG INTERVIEW Seizing digital opportunities
During Sibos 2016, Alex Hamilton sat down with Jurgen Vroegh, Global Head of Payments, Products and Channels at ING Bank, to discuss innovation, digital banking, blockchain and the future
How is ING innovating in the payments sphere? I
Jurgen Vroegh: In regards to correspondent banking, we’re involved in the GPI initiative with SWIFT which is about speed and resiliency. It arrived last year at Sibos in Singapore as an important thing and it’s definitely getting traction now with almost 90 banks signed up, including us. I think we will definitely go to market next year, though we’ve evolved over the years to start changing something that hasn’t changed in more than 30 years – correspondent banking has been very incumbent-dominated. This will definitely change.
PSD2 is a massive change for us, enabling a speedy account opening process, although we need to take into account customer security, which is incredibly important for us. Where we’re focusing on in regards to innovation at the moment is instant payments and also the applied usage of new technology like blockchain. That’s why we’re participating in the R3 initiative and looking at several areas of interest that need to be challenged by the use of blockchain and distributed ledger technology. We hope to end up with a new customer and user experience, as you need to be aware of the new things happening in the industry to bring the best service to your end users. Instant payments in particular will be a game changer
BS Journal: Let’s jump right down the rabbit hole.
within Europe especially. The use cases not only for our customers but across Europe are huge. Imagine cash management done 24/7 at the convenience of the customer whenever they want across the continent. ING is represented in 28 countries around Europe so we definitely have some coverage there but that is also a challenge for us – bringing innovation to all of our customers across these 28 countries.
IBS Journal: Would you say that cash isn’t as fluid a user experience as contactless?
JV: Cash is dirty [laughs]. You don’t want to know what’s been on or around your notes, especially the US dollar bill. Not to mention coins which are even dirtier than bank notes. So I don’t have cash on me – I use my credit card. I can’t use Apple Pay in some countries but not too many, which annoys me. Figuring out how to manage that will take some time. In the Netherlands, we have more non-cash transactions than cash. There’s 52% to 48% in the favour of the former. Of course cash is not as safe as card payments, something that is embedded in the mind of the end customer. It’s safe, secure, you can always have it with you and you don’t have to head to an ATM just to get it. That’s from a retail perspective but even corporates don’t like cash. Retailers are pushing consumers to pay with their credit or debit card to lower the amount of cash they need to handle because it’s much cheaper. Eventually we will end up with counters at supermarkets where you can pay by cash –
www.ibsintelligence.com © IBS Intelligence 2016
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