Yes Bank Uses RFID to Personalize Service

Oct. 13, 2008Yes Bank, a commercial bank that maintains 101 branches across India, has completed a pilot of an RFID system enabling branch employees to identify bank customers as they enter a particular location. The technology makes it possible for customers to receive personalized service without having to identify themselves. The system, provided by SkandSoft Technologies, has been piloted at Yes Bank's suburban Delhi branch for the past five months, says the bank's executive VP and country head for direct banking, Ravishankar, and is slated to go live there in mid-October. In the following six to eight months, he says, the bank intends to deploy the technology at about a dozen additional branches. Yes Bank focuses on cutting-edge technology, Ravishankar says, calling itself the "new age" of Indian banking. Personalized service is essential at the Delhi branch, he notes, because of the nature of the bank's wealthy clients. The branch is located in one of Delhi's wealthiest areas, where the majority of the bank's customers have high expectations for the personalized service they receive. Although employees cannot know the names of every customer who comes through the door, Ravishankar says, many clients may expect them to do so, and do not want to announce their own names. Instead, they prefer that the bank recognize them and provide personalized service accordingly. To make this possible, Yes Bank is deploying a system that puts more information in the hands of its staff. For the trial, the bank provided 21 customers with RFID-enabled banking cards. The RFID inlays, provided by Gemini Traze, were embedded in the cards. Gemini Traze also provided RFID interrogators and customized gate antennas. The card's 13.56 MHz passive RFID chip, which complies with the Near Field Communication (NFC) standards, is encoded with a unique ID number, says Amol Mudgal, SkandSoft's head of business development. That number links to data regarding the individual customer on a standalone SkandSoft system that utilizes data from the Yes Bank server. The information includes the bank patron's name, account number and photograph. For customers opting to send one of their own employees to take care of their banking needs, that worker also receives an RFID banking card linked to the employee's photograph, as well as related data. At the door of the branch, SkandSoft interrogators capture the unique ID number on the card's RFID tag, whether it resides in a person's wallet, pocket or purse. That number is then transmitted by thereader via a cabled connection to the back-end system. SkandSoft software interprets that data, displaying the name and photo of the individual arriving as a pop-up on fixed screens in multiple locations within the branchat the desk of the greeter, as well as at the stations of the branch's "relationship-management team." Simultaneously, a SkandSoft camera at the entrance is prompted by the system to photograph the individual entering, then send that picture to the same SkandSoft

server, where it can then be matched with the customer's photo on file, to verify that individual's identity. Relationshipmanagement team members then have the option to select that customer's data, indicating they will serve that person. If no one selects a particular customer within a predetermined span of time, the pop-up appears on the branch manager's desktop computer. Once a customer has been selected for service, the pop-up vanishes from all screens. In the meantime, the client takes a seat and the greeter arrives to welcome that individual by name. The greeter can then tell the customer which employee will serve him or her, or escort that patron to a private, soundproof wealthmanagement room. When the customer leaves the bank, the readers again capture the card's ID number, indicating a transaction has been completed. The secondary benefit of this system, Ravishankar says, is business analytics: The bank can evaluate how long customers waited before being selected by someone from the relationship-management team, as well as how long the client took to complete a transaction. One of the greatest challenges for this application, Mudgal says, was the importance placed on aesthetics. The cameras needed to be discrete, and the interrogators needed to be invisible. They also needed to be able to read the cards' tags through bags and pockets, as well as a laptop computer a client may be carrying. Such error-free reading, he notes, was SkandSoft's goal throughout the deployment. "A single misread would mean the solution had failed," Mudgal says. Therefore, the team developed a deployment in which the readers can receive transmissions as the cardholders walk past, thanks to Gemini Traze's customized gate antennas hidden in advertising signs installed at the doorway. The antennas provide a read range of approximately 95 centimeters (37 inches)sufficient to capture a card's ID as it passes through the doorway. "The reader antennae have given us 100 percent reads," he states, "irrespective of whether the card is carried in a wallet, purse, pockets, etc. Ravishankar says he is happy with the system's performance. "In the wealthy banking segment, there are things you need to do to ensure you have a good relationship with the customer," he explains. "One of the keys is recognition, which is provided by this system." He expects to begin using the system in October with 150 to 200 ID cards, and to then expand the deployment as the technology is installed in additional branches. The system, which SkandSoft designed for Yes Bank, will also be made available for use in retail stores, Mudgal says. What's more, he adds, SkandSoft is providing an active RFID solution for retailer applications.