Can you even find anyone (at least under the age 30) that doesn’t have mobile payments or online banking? Even older age groups, including the elderly, are managing to get on with the times and embrace the new ways of contactless payments, managing their financials online and paying bills from the comfort of their home via mobile or desktop. After all, all one needs is an internet connection!
Keeping it Local Will Save Headaches
There are plenty of choices when it comes to mobile payments, or transferring money, but we all know a local choice offers a lot more security than a foreign app (without an established branch, mind you). BOV has embraced the digital age, and that’s not even recent news. BOV was one of the first local banks to introduce all these different ways of accessing and managing finances, making our lives easier.
We say this with fear of sounding like a broken record, but COVID-19 had forced everyone into their homes and branches weren’t even accessible at one point, so people had no choice BUT to use these digital ways to pay and access their bank accounts. It’s fair to say that before, it was only the more tech savvy people that made use of these channels since customers were more than happy to embrace the traditional way of doing things.
Hey if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
…but it did break. During the pandemic.
BOV directed their customers and employees to make the use of these digital services as much as they could, for the safety of both groups, especially ATMs, Cards, and Internet & Mobile Banking. A fascinating discovery was made – between January and May of this year, BOV saw an increase of 60% in mobile to mobile payments, and a 40% increase in bill payments being made online.
Yes, of course bill payments are being done online!
Who wants to queue to pay a bill every month?
Might be hard for younger people to believe, but some people didn’t even bother using a Cashlink Visa before all this. Much to our amazement, the average age of people that applied for a new Cashlink Visa was around 67 years old during the peak hours of COVID! We expected a much lower age bracket, but there we go, Maltese people amaze us once again!
Contactless is Safer in More Ways Than One
If you had to look at it from a hygienic point of view, you almost certainly want to make use of these services even if it’s just to prevent the spread of germs. BOV’s contactless payments and mobile transfers go hand-in-hand with (previously held) social distancing guidelines. In a nutshell, right now, the less surfaces we touch, the better.
Elite users of BOV’s services might have noticed that mobile to mobile payments were limited to €500 a day, but that’s been conveniently increased to €1000 a day! The dude who owes you big time for all those burgers you spotted him has zero excuses now. The BOV Mobile App has over 100,000 downloads, so that’s essentially a quarter of the population with access to the app so you’re sure to find someone that has it if you need to make a mobile payment.
If you’ve ever used contactless before, you know that when you pay for something that costs over €20, you have to input your pin. This is done for security reasons, but it still was that little bit frustrating since most things you pay for with a card would cost over that amount. BOV recognised this and increased the contactless limit without PIN to €50! Don’t forget, you can pay with contactless for any amount you’d like, but anything over €50 would require a pin unless your BOV Visa cards have been uploaded on your smartphone or watch in which case you do not need this either since verification is done once the device is activated.
People are realising more and more that this way of doing things is much more convenient, and Gadgets believes the more accessible these types of services are, the more people will use them. You can be at the beach, and with a few taps on your mobile you’re into your bank account with the tools to do practically anything you need.
Sources:
https://medium.com/@vietanh10/revolut-product-review-48f726e13374
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