Mintsifra allowed interaction of banks with clients through instant messengers

Banks can interact with customers using instant messengers, but for this it is necessary to ensure the reliability of communication channels. This was stated by Vladimir Bengin, Director of the Cybersecurity Department of the Ministry of Digital Development, speaking at the Ural Forum “Cybersecurity in Finance”.

“Do we see the possibility of interacting with customers through instant messengers? Definitely yes. It is simply a task, first of all, for banks, for us as a whole, for regulators, and for the community, to ensure that these channels are trusted. We should not come up with some concept in which we will find a weak spot, where this trust will be violated and everyone else will start using it, ”he said (cit. according to RIA Novosti).

The day before, February 15, Bengin, speaking at this forum, warned Russian banks from providing services through messengers, as fraudsters can take advantage of this. According to him, users often receive calls from scammers under the guise of the Central Bank and the Ministry of Internal Affairs through WhatsApp. He clarified that from 65% to 85% of all fraudulent calls now go through this messenger. At the same time, customers do not notice that scammers call them via WhatsApp.

In mid-January at VTB launched the online banking function in Telegram, already on February 14 in the organization reportedthat are considering the possibility of providing services on VK and Odnoklassniki, as well as on other digital platforms. In addition to VTB, they are already working with Telegram Alfa Bank And Promsvyazbank (PSB). So, the latter launched a business assistant for entrepreneurs back in 2021. Alfa-Bank announced the launch of online banking in the messenger in 2022.

The total number of banks that began to use chatbots to communicate with customers increased by 2.5 times last fall compared to 2021, wrote “Vedomosti”. With the help of chatbots, you can check the balance, find out where the nearest ATM is, how to activate the card, repay the loan ahead of schedule, enable SMS notifications, and so on.