OCBC Malaysia to pilot secure chat banking mobile app

OCBC Bank (Malaysia) will collaborate with fintech company Moxtra,  to undertake a year-long regulatory sandbox testing of a secure chat banking mobile application.If successful, the OCBC Secure Chat Banking Mobile App will enable premier banking customers to communicate with, and give financial transaction instructions to their relationship managers securely via a mobile app. This can be done via Whatsapp, WeChat and LINE without having to receive call-back verifications. The test results will be reported to Bank Negara Malaysia for consideration for commercial deployment.According to OCBC Bank head of consumer financial service Lim Wyson, the bank kick-started the initiative in the wake of a rise in phone scams where the perpetrators disguised as legitimate officials in order to phish for customer information.“This will improve people’s experience of our services without compromising security; it will also ultimately safeguard them from falling victim to phone spoofing and scamming activities,” Lim added.A regulatory sandbox is a controlled live testing environment in which a fintech solution involving real customers and real financial transactions is deployed.