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Thursday, April 28, 2011

What is Virtual Banking?

Continued from Yesterday

The demo version had a similar look and feel to Second Life, an online virtual world that some real-life banks have used in recent years as a marketing and financial literacy tool.

A foreign bank involved in retail banking, credit card issuing, investment banking and wealth management is using web.Alive for employee training, Kevin Reilly, the financial services vertical leader at Avaya, said in an interview. He would not name the bank, citing the client's request for anonymity.

Larry Ryan, a chief technologist at HP, said web.Alive is a flexible tool with many uses.

"We don't necessarily know where this is going to go," Ryan said in an interview. "It's a new thing."

He added that web.Alive could be used to reach high-net-worth clients or to help banks that lack a large network of physical branches raise their profile.

"This sort of technology is very specific," Ryan said. "It's part of a channel strategy for a bank."

The portal, which a bank's customers would access by installing a software plug-in on their computers, could be customized to let multiple customers interact at the same time. It can also be used for one-on-one sessions with a bank employee.

"It would be part of the design process for deciding if access is public or private," Tim Evans, the director of retail banking in HP's enterprise business, said in emailed responses to questions provided by a spokeswoman.

"The current concept is to allow multiple customers to be present, browsing the virtual bank, but to enter private chat rooms for" one-on-one discussions, Evans said.

Banks have experimented with virtual environments before.

A handful of banks bought virtual land to set up private islands several years ago in Second Life, an online world started by Linden Research Inc. in San Francisco. However, many businesses that went into Second Life eventually left, partly due to the anything-goes nature of the unmoderated virtual world. Another factor was that Second Life already had a thriving economy based on its own virtual currency, the Linden dollars.

Continued Tomorrow

http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/176_81/virtual-banking-worlds-provide-tangible-lessons-1036619-1.html

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think it is need to add few words to virtual banking. Also such thing is called virtual according to usage of virtual data rooms, as Ideals one. These rooms offer secured data storage and sharing. So, for banking deals it is very useful instrument.