If you’re fascinated by how electronic channels have revolutionised the way we do our banking, you might enjoy this little exercise. Imagine, a time, not too far away, when you’re watching a movie shot in a fancy locale. Immediately, you snap a screenshot on your camera phone, upload it on the web to find out what your peers have to say about it, solicit the best travel offers and voila, you’ve booked your vacation on the spot!

If I had to choose one word to describe the future banking channel, it would be mobility. ‘Channel Next’ is about overcoming the bounds of geography, regulation and device to stay with customers no matter where they go or what they hold in their hands. It will be more seamless, unified, integrated and connected with social media. ‘Channel Next’ is what mobile or Internet banking is yet to evolve into.

Because mobility is the essence of Channel Next, it will not restrict itself to a single piece of hardware, but rather, be accessible by a range of handheld devices including RFID/NFC- enabled equipment, smartcards, mobile phones and so on. Also, as illustrated in the above example, it will be more than just another banking channel, enabling a host of learning, decisioning and fulfilment activities to put users in direct contact with vendors most of the time, with the bank only acting as an intermediary. Not just that, it will even allow customers to purchase on one channel using a particular bank, be served on a second channel by another bank, after which the transaction might be fulfilled on a third channel by a non-banking supplier!

I also expect Channel Next to be more intelligent, which means it could authenticate you on an m-commerce site by recognising your voice, or read an RFID tag in a store to tell you all you needed to know about a product including how it is rated by opinion leading websites, experts or user communities, then connect you with your Relationship Manager so you could requisition a loan and finally let you pay for the item by connecting you online to your bank account! And of course, Channel Next will be quite cashless because it will move money directly from a bank or mobile account to a vendor, recipient or other account.

In other words, Channel Next will only be limited by imagination. How far does yours stretch?