Private sector lender ICICI Bank on Thursday announced the launch of services that would enable its customers to create fixed deposits, pay utility bills and access details of trade finance instantly on WhatsApp.

“Services like opening FDs and paying utility bills are available for customers. The trade finance services are being piloted with some select corporates; they will be available for all in next few days,” it said in a statement, adding that the service for recharge of prepaid mobile phones will also be available shortly on WhatsApp.

Retail customers will be able to create FDs, pay bills for electricity, cooking gas and postpaid mobile phones through WhatsApp while corporates and owners of MSMEs can check trade finance related services like customer ID, Import Export (IE) code, limit availability of all credit facilities availed from the bank, status of pending inward remittances and history of inward remittances.

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The bouquet of trade finance services is available for current account customers with trade services enabled in their account.

The bank had launched a host of services on the popular messaging app six months ago and now with the new services, a total of 25 banking services will be available to its customers on Whatsapp. The objective has been to help customers to fulfil their banking requirements from their home or office while maintaining social distance during the Covid -19 pandemic.

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“Over two million users have adopted banking services on WhatsApp in a short span of six months. Enthused by the response, we have added these new industry-first services. WhatsApp Banking is now available for retail, NRI, corporate and MSME customers with a variety of services,” said Bijith Bhaskar, Head- Digital Channels and Partnership, ICICI Bank.