Comtrade and Viber, with joint forces, created an option because of which you won't go to the bank anymore: Atanas Raykov discovered why it will cause a boom in the world (PHOTO)

By creating banking platform and possibility to shop over their application, Viber has started fulfilling their ambition of turning towards the world of business in order to enable its users simpler and easier life. In parallel, the people from the company are thinking about ways to improve the options offered every day, as well as creating new ones. Telegraf.rs talked to the general Manager of Viber Atanas Raykov about a new banking service that is currently promoted, and what can we expect in the future from Viber.

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Comtrade Digital Services, a leading software company, created an automated banking platform for Viber. The company has developed a banking solution with a chat-bot that understands a customer orders immediately and completely safe.

The new solution will enable customers to implement a wide range of banking transactions entirely through a chat-bot. With a move of a finger, Viber users will now be able to instantly send and transfer money, check bank balance, access the other banking services. Also, they will be able to immediately withdraw the money over Viber payments that has been sent to them using QR code on the ATM machines or to go to the nearest branch of the bank.

Foto: Milena Đorđević

Can you tell more about banking platform you developed with ComTrade and how it all would look like?

- So, the banking platform that we are having right now with ComTrade, that we presented at Technobank conference yesterday, is aimed to give opportunity to users to manage almost everything in their bank accounts and their money, to have conversation to Viber with the bank. It’s much easier, it’s much more convenient and we think that this will open a lot of opportunities for the users to get better control and information from their bank. The other part is that the banks will be able to send information for transactions as they have them right away fully encrypted on Viber to the users. So this is very important. We are having services that are linked in couple of countries already, we have a working banking bot with Adiko bank in Bosnia and Herzegovina that we announced last month and actually our goal is to walk these services in next month.

How people reacted to this banking options, did you get some feedback from the customers?

- Some of the banks that we have have already more than 100.000 people that are using their public accounts to communicate to them to Viber in just a couple of months. This means that popularity is quite strong. Customers have approached the service with curiosity and with a little bit of doubt . But a lot of the customers when they start using it see that it is very convenient because they open Viber all the time.

Foto: Telegraf, Promo

Is this first step for Viber to get to business world with this banking platform and shopping option?

- Yes, this is a part of our ambitions, the other part of the things we are working on is to connect merchants and businesses so that you can actually buy your dress or buy your groceries or order fast food for lunch through Viber. So we are working also with providers of such kind of services to be present in Viber. The shopping option is still available only in the US, where we opened it as a test phase, we have acquired tens of merchants already that are very, very big merchants, like Macy’s for example that are present on the platform, and we see very high engagement, so people that are using the service and have quite a lot of free terms there can do it even they are having conversation on viber, and they can share it easily with their friends. So, it’s very encouraging and based on this science we are planning to roll out these services to other markets in Serbia.

Viber recently added secret message, how many people are using it and do they know about that option?

- So this was an option that looks like it was quite anticipated by our users, in Serbia particularly. It got very fast adoption, although we did not do something to promote it within the app. And it goes down to the big topic of privacy, and security nowadays, so you have the options to further secure your conversations, even to protect the history, and what happens then with these messages, has been like a very positive addition to the users and we have right now more than a million messages sent. 

Foto: Milena Đorđević

Around 40 billion stickers have been sent in 2016. Is that a record Viber is proud of?

Yea, so, this were the stickers of our fastest growing parts of the business, I would say that this is for sure a record year for our sticker business, and we are very happy with that, we are putting and building new stickers that are also in local languages all the time. We also had a very strong growth in the region, so we grew by more than 40 percent in Serbia last year, so we are very, very happy. We have more than 3 million customers in Serbia and also, they are spending more than one and a half hours per day on average on Viber.

Recently you announced that you are suspending work on Windows application. What can their users except in the future?

- This doesn’t mean that our current apps don’t work on Windows, we have our Windows apps that work quite well with their current functionality. What our decision was to focus on 98 percent of our user base, unfortunately, windows phone managed to achieve very small marker share, and that is why we are focusing on rolling our new features, like, secret chats, or shopping, and actually we are at the same time updating our desktop apps very fast, so we have application for Windows, but they are for Windows desktop, and we also have applications for Mac. So the applications for Windows and Windows 10 are actually hybrid ones so the very new Windows phones will be able to use it.

Foto: Telegraf

Can you tell me something about the great thing that you done when the American president banned the people from Muslim countries entering the USA, you provided free calls from that countries to the United States?

- This was something that Viber sees its mission as connecting the people in the world, easier and in a secure way. And because of our values, of our maintaining privacy, freedom and security, we have managed to support the societies exactly in these countries. So we have seen that our technology had a very positive impact in promoting democracy and in a lot of other values in these countries, and we have a lot of users there, and we really see them as a part of our family, so when they were divided by this decision from their families, relatives, business partners, in the US, we decided to act and to put our services into their help, free of charge for them, although this is something that we have direct cost. We really believe that it is very important to send a clear message, the world has to move forward rather backwards. We have done campaigns, for disasters, like in Nepal, and we really think that we have the responsibility, with our size, with our popularity, to actually support this communities.

Among all people that are using the application, what is the favorite option Viber has?

 - Actually, right now, Viber is more popular as a messaging app, rather than calling app, so people are more often using it for messaging. When it comes to messaging, the feature that is used the most is sending pictures. So, actually, sending pictures through Viber has become a key feature, something that people are very attracted to.This is the reason why our last two or three versions, we launched number of features related to the pictures, the timer for self destructed pictures, the option to send pictures with one or two taps which is must faster sending of pictures and now with our new version which is coming out 6.8, we are also allowing to put your stickers on them, to make doodles and to do a lot of customization on the pictures that you send. So this is something that we saw as very, very important, how people want to express.

Foto: Milena Đorđević

Are the people used to chat bots and how are the people reacting on that?

- It depends on the market. I would have to say in Serbia, people are really more cautious. We have a lot of bots around the world, we are now moving a lot of them to Serbia so we already have news category, vend bots, payment bots, bank bots, and so on. But I think it is a gradual process. Once the users try the chat bot, we see that 80 or 85 percent finish the conversation with some kind of result, so they don’t abandon the conversation which is, when you compare it to some mobile apps or mobile web sites, its actually much higher percentages, so we see a lot of promise in that. I don’t believe chat bots will replace all existing communication channels but rather the approach there is to find groups topics where they can be most effective.

What can we expect from Viber in future and what new options?

- Of course, we are working very much in two directions. One of the directions that we are working on is bringing more and more entertainment options, options to have fun, to be able to share positive things in your life as easy and as in most expressive way as possible. And on the other side we will provide more options of useful content, reaching out to businesses, or useful information in a flexible and a fast way.

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(Telegraf.co.uk / N. Ivanovski / B.I.)