Digital banking in a post-app era

One trend to watch is the “post-app era”, which Gartner defines as: “… a world where mobile apps will be joined by many alternative approaches to providing functions and experiences for mobile users, and rewards for developers and service providers.”

Given that the centrepiece of most banks’ digital strategies is the mobile banking app, this heralds a marked about-face. At first it may sound like a purely technical issue; it is not.

In the post-app era, every aspect of a bank will have to be rethought — just as the entire music business was reconfigured for the era of music streaming via platforms such as iTunes, Spotify and Tidal. Banks have gone through the first stage of digitisation, akin to replacing vinyl with CDs and selling CDs online; they now need to fully digitise their business.

Three key features in tomorrow’s digital landscape are contextual commerce, platforms and smart agents, all of which are characterised by machine-to-machine interaction. Since machines use APIs rather than apps, banking is inevitably entering a post-app era, or at least a decreasing-app era. For banks, this will bring change  across every aspect of the business, from products and pricing to manufacturing, distribution and marketing. Of course, this requires new capabilities, but perhaps more challenging will be the need for a different mind-set around what a bank is and what its position in the digital landscape should be.

Read the white paper and discover the digital landscape in the post-app era