No one can have failed to notice that the digitalisation of the banks has been accelerating exponentially for some years now. These days, virtually every banking service can be accessed via mobile applications. And new services are being added all the time. It’s a revolution in the way banking is experienced, and one that has barely started yet. KBC Brussels is playing a leading role in all this.

Whereas it used to be the clients who came to the branch to carry out most of the banking business, these days it is the bank, as it were, that comes to the client. What got the ball rolling initially, was the possibility of entering your own payments via your computer.

The number of banking services available electronically then multiplied, before spreading to mobile devices like tablets and above all smart phones. As the cost of mobile data steadily reduced, smartphone use became a ubiquitous part of everybody’s daily life. Our mobile phones enable us to communicate in every possible way (voice, video, text, email, social networks, etc.) but also to access all our banking services via a mobile app.

The presence in the Belgian market of applications shared by several major banks, such as Payconiq by Bancontact ou itsme, have also done a lot to consolidate the digital banking landscape.

Digitalisation at KBC Brussels centres on two mobile applications, the success of which continues to grow unstoppably: KBC Brussels Touch (PC and tablets) and KBC Brussels Mobile (smartphones).

According to Deloitte, 84% of Belgians owned a smartphone at the end of 2018 (compared to 82% with laptops), so it is hardly surprising that mobile banking transactions in Belgium are breaking one record after another. More and more clients have come to appreciate the variety and ease of use of the functions offered by KBC Brussels Mobile.

KBC Brussels Mobile puts a whole range of convenient services in your pocket: real-time transfers by smartphone, incoming and outgoing payments via QR code, payments at online and traditional retailers, paying bills, personal transfers, deferred payments, consulting your balances at other banks, parking, buying bus and train tickets, hiring bikes, buying service cheques, and more besides.

Following on from features like purchasing goods and services outside the bank (bus and train tickets, parking, service cheques and even more to come), the next challenge will be to offer an ultra-personalised experience of the bank and its services. With the client’s consent, and through the intelligent utilisation of user data from mobile applications, it is already possible at KBC Brussels to offer personalised advice on things like loans and investment.

So we can imagine a near future in which a client passing a house for sale can use KBC Brussels Mobile to scan the QR code on the estate agent’s sign and then immediately receive an analysis of their financial position, simulate their home loan, make the vendor an offer based on these elements and sign the contract online if all parties are in agreement.

Or where clients can receive attractive investment proposals on their smartphone, based on their investor profile and the immediate market opportunities corresponding with it, so that they never need to miss out on a potentially good deal.

In other words, a new way of thinking about the bank, totally centred on the client and their needs and interests.

All you need to do, is download KBC Brussels Mobile and then choose the ‘Demo’ option in the upper left menu, for an overview of the possibilities offered by the app.