PRESS: Banks switching to Viber client notifications to save money

MOSCOW, Jul 3 (PRIME) -- Russian processing services provider MultiCarta is switching notifications of clients on their transactions with banking cards to messenger Viber from SMSs, business daily Vedomosti reported on Tuesday, citing a spokesperson for Pochta Bank, an owner of 74.7% of MultiCarta.

Alexei Blinov, head of the client department at MultiCarta, said Viber is frequently used for marketing mailouts, and now it will be used to inform clients of topping up accounts or money withdrawals. Clients will see an amount of a deal and their current balance in a message, he said.

The service of notifications of clients via Viber already works in six regional banks, Blinov said without deliberating. MultiCarta will expand this service to 40 banks that are the processing operator’s partners with a total emission of some 700,000 cards.

The idea is promising, because Viber charges from 0.28 to 0.47 rubles per notification, while an SMS costs from 0.6 to 1.9 rubles.

According to TMT Consulting, Viber mailouts are by 20–30% cheaper than SMSs, but SMSs are more reliable, and they currently cover 96% of the country’s population, while messengers have only 41%. Users also react differently: an SMS is read by 99% of users, while a Viber message is seen by 80–90%, TMT Consulting’s analyst Irina Yakimenko told the daily.

The market was scanned by the Federal Antimonopoly Service, and the authority’s Deputy Director Anatoly Golomolzin said that half of clients of connection operators do not have the smartphones with sufficient technical options and cannot use messengers.

(63.1394 rubles – U.S. $1)

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