Revolution of Digital Banking

With the European Central Bank considering to investigate for a digital currency and the rise of the FinTech companies we feel the technology being indispensable for the finance world and as we see how banks have evolved from being just branches to our pockets/phones and computers in recent years, this becomes concrete proof that we have entered a new era, rather than just a feeling.

The world of finance will continue to change in the coming years, driven by digitalization and the new business models brought with it and for sure it is not only FinTechs who keep up with this digitalization, but also the established banks keep up with the new era to protect their place/position(?) in this world with the digital banking system.

Quick, easy and seamless. These are the words that define digital banking. To be more specific Digital banking is the digitization of all traditional banking activities and programs that were only available to customers when physically inside of a bank branch. Those services
are now offered to a customer on their computer, smartphone, or tablet which is like carrying the banking facility with them all the time.

Is the first step of the finance sector in this digital era? Of course not. The banking sector started to take the first steps for electronic banking with the internet becoming accessible in the 1990s, but the real transformation took place when smart phones came into our lives in the 2000s.
The fact that more than sixty percent of bank customers prefer their cell phones as a tool for digital banking is proof that the smartphone as part of our lives is one of the most important factors in terms of banking development.

Even in Germany, where people tend to be skeptical about digitization for security reasons like data privacy , a major shift can be observed. “ Digital Finance' survey conducted by the digital association Bitkom and summarized in this study report: 53 percent of young citizens (16 to 29 years old) completely forgo visiting their bank branch, while only 7 percent of the total population relies on branch visits. And while just one in two used online banking in 2014, four-fifths of Germans do so today.

The only reason for the spread of digital banking is not that people no longer want to wait in bank lines with the ease of technological developments. We entered a new era after Covid 19, and this era has accelerated digitalization and made it more involved in our lives.This period has pushed us to do our work from home, via computers or phones. This sudden increase in the demand for digital platforms also enabled the sectors to show a development in digitalization that would normally take 5 to 10 years in this short period of time and of course to stay in the competition also the banking sector made great investments on the digitization during Covid. In order to survive in this accelerated digital transformation process, banks need to be well-organized and be ready to integrate the new business models into their strategies.

According to a study conducted by Deloitte 60% of banks shortened the opening times of their branches or kept them completely closed, but in this process, many of them reached their customers with new digital features and continued to provide services. 34% of banks have fully digitized their account opening, 23% remote identification and verification, and 18% contactless payments.

According to a study by BCG, seventy percent of companies fail in their digital transformation. So why is it that only thirty percent of them are successful? Digital transformation can lead to success if you have a clear goal. Digital transformation is successful when you look at it from a completely new angle and think customer-centric when creating the roadmap.
Institutions that want to be successful in this transformation should not view digital banking as an addition or upgrade to their existing business model, but as a completely new business area. By carefully planning the steps to be taken, they should have an appropriate IT infrastructure in place to maximize customer satisfaction and resolve issues as quickly as possible, incorporating concepts such as cloud banking and blockchain.

Cloud banking is one of these concepts that is considered as a key to success in the mentioned digital transformation; it is a concept that has emerged with the usage of cloud computing technology in the banking sector. Cloud computing refers to the supply of various services over the Internet, including data storage, servers, databases, networks, and software. Cloud computing is not only a fast and reliable option for information storage and backup, but also offers financial benefits to its users, as it does not require any additional physical equipment. Although the early adopters of this technology are finTech companies, the fact that a commercial bank like Deutsche Bank has signed a 10-year contract with Google Cloud shows how well the industry has been keeping up with this change. In addition to that, Blockchain technology is a technology that still needs to be developed in terms of energy efficiency and related issues, but with such features as being not committed to a single center and eliminating the difficulty of finding a reliable intermediary, it allows transactions to be carried out much faster, safer and for sure more profitable.

In conclusion, the changing demands of consumers and the benefits of technological developments have brought us to a new point. In order to survive and to stay up to date, it is necessary and inevitable to transform the traditional methods to digital ones.