Akbank is a top retail bank with over eight million account holders and market capitalization of approximately $20 billion. As such, it often aims to be on the cutting edge of technology in order to better serve its customer base. One example of this is a partnership with Turkcell last year to offer the company's NFC-based Mobile Wallet Service to account holders. Now, Akbank has embraced the possibilities presented by real-time communications.
The bank is doing this through a partnership with Requestec, a provider of video calling, conferencing and IVR solutions.
Requestec's Zenon Gateway will power the world's first Internet banking HD video calling service, allowing Akbank customers to make one-click video calls from within Akbank's online banking service to a video-enabled service agent. Best of all, Requestec's technology works in any Web browser, and in any iOS or Android app, without the need to install additional software or plug-ins.
As such, customers need only a Web cam and microphone to place secure, face-to-face video calls to a bank consultant. The aim of this is to provide Akbank customers with a level of trust and transparency unparalleled in the financial industry.
Requestec's full offerings will be on display at this week's WebRTC Conference & Expo in Atlanta.
The Requestec Zenon Gateway works in tandem with the Genesys Contact Center suite, allowing the bank's customer representatives to use Counterpath's Bria or Requestec's Zenon Client to receive customer calls. The real magic occurs on the customer end, however, as the Zenon Gateway utilizes either Flash UDP or WebRTC to make the call, depending on the Web browser being used.
Full mobile capability will be rolled out later this year using Requestec's mobile SDKs.
Requestec added WebRTC functionality to the Zenon Gateway very recently, enabling high-quality, plug-in free, browser-based chatting from compatible browsers such as Chrome and Firefox.
"It's been a fantastically enjoyable project," said Ben Weekes from Requestec in a statement, "and I thoroughly enjoyed working with the Akbank team in bringing such a groundbreaking service to life."
Edited by
Ryan Sartor
