George: “The mark of 200,000 users has been surpassed”
- More than 200,000 George users within four months
- Several hundred feedback messages by customers incorporated
Since the new digital banking platform George has been launched in January, more than 200,000 people have already registered for George. However, George is only now reaching its true potential.
George is the first growing banking platform in Austria that is developed with significant input from users. Whether new plug-ins or small improvements in the app are suggested, every feedback is given serious consideration by experts. Co-creation workshops with customers have taken place in this context as well. Several hundred customers have provided their ideas and proposals for further development in the meantime, and many of these have already been implemented. Erste Bank and Sparkassen are the first banking group to forge such a path in Austria, by actively including customers and building a digital banking application precisely in line with customer wishes. “The crucial difference to the way things were done before is that customers are leading the way. This is the only manner in which we can continue to expand our leading position in digital banking”, says Peter Bosek, member of the management board at Erste Bank, in summarizing this development.
George by the numbers
George is growing faster than expected. “Within just four months, the mark of 200,000 users has been surpassed”, says Bosek. Since the launch in January, more than 600 million euro were moved with the help of George in about one million transactions. Those who still believe that online banking is mainly a preserve of very young Austrians are in error. The average age of George users is 39 years, every fifth user is even older than 50. Once they are logged into George, customers are spending more time with their finances than has hitherto been usual in online banking.
George has a modular design and users are able to tailor their digital banking activities individually with plug-ins. To date approximately every fifth user has already expanded his banking experience with a plug-in. A short while ago a new plug-in has been introduced, which allows one to design one's own background pattern for George, and this is not merely a gimmick. It is an additional security feature which together with the greeting, the name and faces makes one's banking experience unique and immune against Phishing imitations. New features and plug-ins will follow shortly, which will show one's account movements in a playful way in an entirely new form. This will also make trends in one's behaviour visible, such as whether e.g. more money has been spent, in which stores one is doing most of one's shopping, or which payments are still outstanding.
George by the numbers
George is growing faster than expected. “Within just four months, the mark of 200,000 users has been surpassed”, says Bosek. Since the launch in January, more than 600 million euro were moved with the help of George in about one million transactions. Those who still believe that online banking is mainly a preserve of very young Austrians are in error. The average age of George users is 39 years, every fifth user is even older than 50. Once they are logged into George, customers are spending more time with their finances than has hitherto been usual in online banking.
George has a modular design and users are able to tailor their digital banking activities individually with plug-ins. To date approximately every fifth user has already expanded his banking experience with a plug-in. A short while ago a new plug-in has been introduced, which allows one to design one's own background pattern for George, and this is not merely a gimmick. It is an additional security feature which together with the greeting, the name and faces makes one's banking experience unique and immune against Phishing imitations. New features and plug-ins will follow shortly, which will show one's account movements in a playful way in an entirely new form. This will also make trends in one's behaviour visible, such as whether e.g. more money has been spent, in which stores one is doing most of one's shopping, or which payments are still outstanding.
