One of the big three Singapore banks claims to have broken fresh ground with a technology innovation for customers.

OCBC, parent group of Bank of Singapore, claims to be the first lender in the Asian city-state to enable voice-activated banking for clients.

Retail clients can check bank balances, outstanding credit card balances and details and make e-payments to friends and family using Siri, the “virtual assistant” system of Apple.

This publication has asked OCBC whether such a facility will be extended to BoS clients and will update in due course. (Often, digital innovations are launched in the retail space because of economies of scale and cost-saving benefits, and extended to private bank clients later.)

The e-payments can be made instantly to any bank account in Singapore, including bank accounts not linked to the PayNow service. (PayNow is a nationwide peer-to-peer funds transfer service that enables funds transfers using mobile or NRIC numbers.)

In October last year, OCBC Bank rolled out a similar service to business banking customers.

Clients of the new mobile banking app can check bank balances and credit card details by saying, “Hey Siri, what’s my balance?”, or “How much money do I have in my bank account?”, or “What is my credit card spend?”. They can then authenticate the transaction with their fingerprint or facial recognition. Similarly, a customer using the most updated version of the OCBC Pay Anyone app can make a funds transfer by telling Siri whom to send the money to and how much to send, and then validate the transaction using their fingerprint or facial recognition.

This voice banking innovation was developed by OCBC Bank’s in-house mobile developer and E-Business teams. The service is available to all OCBC Bank customers using iPhone devices running at least the iOS11 software and the latest versions of the OCBC Mobile Banking and OCBC Pay Anyone apps. Authentication using facial recognition is only available on iPhone X devices.