Customers of Singapore’s OCBC Bank can now make purchases via their mobile devices minutes rather than days after applying for a digital bank card.

The bank has enabled instant approval for key consumer products including debit and credit cards and personal loans. Customers also instantly benefit from card discounts, rebates and rewards.

When a customer applies for a digital card they receive it instantly and can use it as soon as they add it to their mobile wallet or use the card details for online and mobile app purchases. They can also access cash from their line of credit straight away.

The physical version of the card is issued the same day for online applications approved before 12.30pm.

To drive take-up, the bank is offering exclusive rewards until the end of July to customers that use the service.

OCBC Bank became the first bank in Singapore to allow customers to instantly open and use a new account in June last year through a partnership with national personal data platform MyInfo.

This enables application forms to be prefilled with personal details such as proof of income and home address. Customers are then authenticated in real time using the bank’s own digital KYC technology.

The partnership with MyInfo has now been extended to help assess credit worthiness for instant card, personal loan and credit approval.

Customers applying for instant credit select to use MyInfo. Once they have agreed to OCBC Bank retrieving their data, they review the prefilled fields on the application form and submit.

When this is approved they are sent an email and SMS with a link to access the digital card or loan account which they can use instantly.

“With a mobile device in almost every Singaporean’s hand, digitally-savvy customers expect banking products and services to be instantly and immediately accessible,” said OCBC Bank’s Singapore head of consumer financial services Dennis Tan.

”This is a natural progression of our pursuit of the new digital – to provide instant, embedded and frictionless access to all our products and services for the convenience of customers, enabling them to start a banking relationship with us seamlessly and instantly.

“I expect one in every two OCBC Bank customers to be onboarded digitally by 2020, so this service launch is a significant milestone in our digitalisation journey.”

Tan added that the bank will extend the instant digital application and approval process to secured lending products such as home and car loans “so customers do not have to wait to purchase their dream home or drive away in their dream car”.

Digital and mobile onboarding is an area of growth for the banking industry with Antelop Solutions launching an integrated onboarding, authentication and mobile payments software as a service platform this month.

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