Novus Technologies: Renovating Payment Journey

‘Convenience’ is the new standard in the transaction and payments processing world. “Unlike the olden days, transactions are not restricted to brick-and-mortar branches and locations, instead, financial transactions and payments are being completed everywhere—in retail stores, online, or while on the move,” states Ricardos Khoury, President and CEO, Novus Technologies. As making seamless payments in these situations is not easy, Novus designs solutions by factoring in ‘convenience’ from a payer’s as well as the receiver’s standpoint to build products that can satisfy needs from across the spectrum.

To carry on with day-to-day monetary needs, a person might need to visit a bank, especially for complex transactions or large withdrawals open not served on ATMs. On the flipside, a bank visit can become troublesome given the long queues and waiting times involved and the inability of banks to understand who is who on the branch floor, how complex is their transaction or even profiling them before reaching the counter and identifying themselves. This is where YOUBANK— Novus Technologies’ flagship product—comes into the picture. YOUBANK facilitates user interaction with banks and allows customers to make detailed transaction requests, such as the required denominations, even before they arrive at the teller counter. Request confirmation in the form of a QR code is the door to Novus’s way of banking, which when scanned on arriving at the bank notifies the branch and commences the transaction. Going to the bank with the prior preparation using YOUBANK eliminates the waiting time, trivial questions, form filling procedures, and even tedious data entry for tellers. And, since the bank already has the transaction request details, bankers can just go ahead and execute the transaction and utilize the precious time saved to build customer relationship.

“YOUBANK is a customer-centric solution that helps banks manage Customer Experience (CX) across multiple disconnected channels—mobile, web, kiosk, self-service, queue management and the person on the counter,” says Khoury.

While Novus transforms its customers’ pain points into solutions, the company tries to address one more serious concern—payment while on the move. Novus enables users to make payments using a single instrument as opposed to fragmented payment modes like cash, cards, cheques or online gateways. The company is advocating a single payment platform, in the form of a mobile wallet or a wearable device, as a means to truncate transaction processing time. For better results, Novus is working with retailers, telcos, and petroleum companies to bring the whole payment ecosystem together, making it seamless for end users.

The company also has an in-house intuitive UX designing service to assist clients in designing their mobile and internet banking, ATM, and kiosk interfaces for seamless, connected, and channel-agnostic customer-centric interactions.

One of the most innovative implementations of YOUBANK and UX best practices is at RCBC Bank in the Philippines which is referred to by the bank as TouchQ. RCBC customers initiate the transaction on mobile or Kiosk and complete it in any of the branches or on self-service. Besides the innovative and digital aspect of the solution, reduction of queuing and waiting time, the most significant gain from TouchQ is the personalized experience that RCBC can now give to every customer irrespective of the size of his bank account. “Customer is King” has been transformed from slogan to a real life implementation.

Having developed a range of products around payment, connecting user, merchants, and agents, Novus envisions growing their financial inclusion and rural banking portfolio as well as their geographical reach. Currently, the company wants to establish a stronger foothold in South East Asia through its digital agent banking platform that is assisting banks and Fintecs to cover the last mile without having to invest in brick and mortar, and partly in the Middle East by offering advanced digital and CX solutions facilitating retail banking and payments for today’s digital savvy crowd. From a product roadmap perspective, Novus desires continue adding new innovative features to its digital offerings to make them seamless and interoperable for any retailer, telco, bank, or petroleum company but most importantly the end users of those businesses.