Chinese Banks Out of Ideas

Poor education and low trust of new technology are to blame for the unbearable queues seen in Chinese banks according to new dragondata research.

Chinese banks believe they have done all they can to reduce the time consumers face standing in line to pay household bills by introducing a range of alternative non-traditional payment options.

Despite the option in many instances to make payments via online banking, mobile phone SMS, telephone banking many Chinese retail customers continue their long held tradition of making payments in person and using cash.

Cash remains the dominant means through which many Chinese pay for goods and services – yet the banks have spent millions of Yuan developing new technologies in the hope of changing this behaviour.

A new study by dragondata has revealed many Chinese have a high level of distrust of making payments using credit cards and mobile phone SMS because of the high incidence of fraud in China.

Consumers also believe by making payments face-to-face, despite the long waiting time they invariably endure, is more reliable in the event of a mistake being made because they can return to the place where the transaction was made and vocally seek recompense.

dragondata spoke with 10 senior executives of Chinese banks and the general consensus was that there are problems inside their respective branches, yet the banks dismissed the notion that they hadn’t done enough to alleviate the problem.

Education of the new technologies and reassurances over safety are the biggest hurdles the banks say but this isn’t the role of the banking industry they believe – the Government needs to step in and get involved they say.

Banks are perturbed by the congestionproblems of their branches and would like to resolve the situation because having tellers and representatives who are constantly on the back foot in terms of dealing with throngs of clients makes it difficult to take advantage of any cross-selling opportunities.

Wealth management is a growing area of financial services in China, but the bank executives dragondata spoke to said the grow was being hampered by some of the habitual habits of consumers.