Hello everybody! The VTB team is in touch “Messengers and chatbots”. Today we will talk about how we worked on one of the largest and most unusual projects in recent times. At the end of 2022, it became clear that VTB’s digital services must scale and move to new platforms due to the unavailability of the mobile application in stores. Such a solution was needed so that every client could use the bank’s services online; it was especially relevant for owners of iOS devices. One of the obvious solutions was the entry of the online bank into social networks and messengers — mobile applications familiar to most people.

This is how we began the integration of VTB Online into Telegram and the Russian social network “VKontakte”. And at the same time, they faced several questions. How to use the messenger interface to access highly sensitive information? How to make authorization as convenient and secure as possible? How to create a clear and convenient menu? We share insights in the article.

Start: launch of the VTB chatbot on the VKontakte platform

Chatbot VTB u “VKontakte” appeared in March 2023 — the service is similar to the one that works in other social networks and messengers, for example, Telegram and Viber. Important spoiler: you can communicate with the VTB chatbot only from the bank’s official VKontakte community page by clicking on the message.

Almost immediately after the appearance of the chatbot, VTB directly launched the Bank in VK – with access to financial transactions. To create a new full-fledged service, it was necessary to solve a number of serious tasks:

1. Ensure the security of account data and other confidential information of bank customers.

2. Adapt the customer journey to manage finances in a platform with a very large number of products and services.

3. Reuse the developed solution for Telegram without modifications.

4. Leave native text scripts for messaging between the client and the chatbot. And for account and card operations, use new opportunities.

At the beginning of the work, we identified the key stages of creating the service, studied the quantitative and qualitative studies that were conducted earlier. In particular, it was important to understand how:

• create an MVP version with authorization;

• ensure a high level of service security;

• develop an optimal design concept;

• ready to test functionality

What now? What is the best way to start and which options are the best to start at the first stage? First, let’s turn to convenience and customer experience.

From a chatbot to a full-fledged online bank: how to think through important details

The VTB chatbot has one common knowledge base: you can get equivalent information about the bank’s products and services in any channel where the service works. This is a zone without mandatory authorization — the sender of the request remains unknown, so you can consult in such channels only on general issues, without transferring personal data.

Before starting the development of the bank in messengers and social networks, we carefully studied how users communicate with the bank in the chatbot. For example, which requests are received most often, how often the user visits the chatbot. In fact, the question was the sea. It turned out that such unauthorized channels as WhatsApp and Telegram are mainly used by existing VTB customers. At the same time, 70% of those who contacted Telegram used iOS devices.

The main concerns related to the safety of using messengers due to the lack of necessary experience among customers, as well as difficulties in authorization using a login and password. After all, many customers are used to using biometrics when logging in to VTB Online, and have given up entering data manually.

Authorization for a set of credentials for VTB Online is the first thing a VK Bank user encounters. Only this approach meets safety requirements and is able to provide comfort.

“Initially, it was planned to log into the online bank using biometrics, but the platform has a number of technical limitations that make this implementation temporarily impossible. Of course, to minimize risks, we took into account various data processing factors for authorization: short session lifetime, signature lifetime validation, presence of a user with such a VK ID, and others.” – Vladyslav Makarov, CJE of the Messengers and Chatbots team.

How to choose a UX concept: a bank or a social network?

VK Bank was created for a young, modern audience, and the design of the service should correspond to this. Of course, a banking service on a social network platform requires the creation of an easier interface, compared to the work of classic digital banking services. Therefore, the Bank menu in VK is not overloaded with buttons, each operation is completely carried out on one screen, without transitions and additional clicks. At the same time, the speed of operations at VTB through Bank in VK increased by an average of 2 times due to the creation of a service code from scratch.

The novelty of the concept is that all options work within the framework of one window. We minimize the number of steps and the time spent on the operation in order to obtain the maximum speed of execution of requests. The user does not need to click buttons one more time – view banners or extra screens. Thus, the process takes literally a few seconds. As for the UI part, we decided to make the design concise,” — Daria Berdysheva, designer of the “Messengers and Chatbots” team

The bank purchased a concise menu from VK – Any person will be able to quickly understand the principle of operation. And during the operation, transitions from field to field are easy, and interesting elements and dynamic animations also appear.

Popular operations in VTB Online account for up to 80% of all operations carried out. Earlier research showed that customers are interested in a new experience of using the online bank and everyday services — transfers by phone number, mobile payment, checking the balance of cards and accounts. This means that there is no need to completely transfer the online bank to VKontakte, and it is possible to offer VK Bank users the most important options. Nothing extra.

Let’s give an example with a mobile payment scenario: the service automatically substitutes the client’s number, but this number can be deleted if desired. Also, for Bank in VK, “chips” were reused, which replace the need to open the keyboard and manually enter numbers. This is especially relevant for operations such as paying for a cell phone – the collected “chips” are ideal here.

How to ensure security?

Does the bank in VK transfer confidential data of the social network? No, it’s not true.

We were able to use the interfaces of third-party services to go to the authorized zone of the usual VTB Online in the browser. Any actions of the client are performed on the bank’s servers with a high degree of protection, and information containing personal data or banking secrets always remains locked.

The operation of an online bank in the contour of a social network requires maximum security. That is why all the structural units responsible for security joined the solution of the task. Great work was done by experts in the field of protecting corporate interests, managing regulatory and operational risks, as well as countering fraudulent transactions.

“We were able to save all the information protected in the bank circuit, it is not available either to the VKontakte platform itself or to any other user. Essentially, in our solution, we use a third-party platform as a browser to pull up web forms located on the bank’s servers when an authorized customer action is required, such as a transfer or payment.” ‑ Oleksandr Raikhin, Product Director

Together with the Bank of Russia, we worked out the requirements for the security system, which we followed at all stages of implementation. At the same time, the Bank’s team in VK was responsible for the “service” side of the issue and had to find solutions to take into account all requirements and maintain the most convenient customer paths.

At the same time, fraud scenarios through so-called “social engineering” show that technology alone will not help protect customers from fraud. It is necessary to constantly educate people to safely use the connection with the bank, and we do this, including through our channel. Here, experts clarify how to distinguish an official bank account from a fake one. We remind you that VTB never asks for bank card data, codes from SMS, information about the client in chat or during a phone call.

“Almost 100,000 people have already had time to communicate with the VTB chatbot and expressed interest in the new financial service. We continue to work on the development of the Bank in VK, and are now actively using the best features of the messenger, in particular for security. Now the bank’s clients can not think about how and where to find and download the banking application — but simply go to their favorite messenger and manage their finances 24/7,” — Oleksiy Sinitsyn, team leader.

We did it. We made bank in the nearby chat 🙂