Hong Leong Bank: Optimizing credit card PIN delivery

Challenge

In Malaysia, personal identification numbers (PINs) for the newly issued debit and credit cards are usually delivered to clients in securely printed envelopes sent through regular postal services. This process is not without its challenges. Typically it will take from 2 to 7 days for the letter with PIN to reach the client who has already been given the new payment card.

While waiting for the PIN envelope to arrive, the card is in a deactivated mode, which could have a negative impact on both customer card usage and Hong Leong Bank’s card activation quota. There are also security concerns that are sometimes overlooked.

Once the envelope with the PIN is sent out, the bank may not be able to track its status effectively, and if it was delivered to the cardholder. In case the PIN mailer was not delivered, the bank would have delays in reaching the customers to suggest an alternative PIN delivery option.

Solution

Instead of printing PIN Mailers and sending them over postal services, Infobip suggested to implement PIN delivery over a secured SMS channel. It is a PIN delivery solution based on the highly secure and PCI DSS compliant flow, in which the temporary PIN numbers cannot be read or intercepted. It reduces the number of people and steps involved in the PIN generation and delivery process.

Now, instead of managing complex process of PIN delivery over postal services, SMS is being used. Considering the fact that HLB has branches in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Singapore, China it benefited from partnership with Infobip because it can deliver the service anywhere in the world.

Result

For Hong Leong Bank, SMS implementation had numerous advantages. HLB clients received their PIN numbers faster, due to newly implemented process that bypasses many touchpoints of standard, letter-based process, and due to the fact that an SMS is delivered much faster than an envelope. Accordingly, customers were able to activate and start using their cards right away.

Secondly, the bank obtained additional insights into the delivery flow, which it didn’t have before. It was able to track if the message was delivered or not. If the message with a PIN was not delivered, they were able to offer an alternative way of providing it.

SMS solution proved to be much more cost-effective than the earlier solution. As a result of SMS implementation, HLB project management experienced around a 30% increase in internal process efficiency, having reduced the printing and letter sending process. They also recognized that the cost of delivering PINs over SMS is around 50% less than with a traditional letter approach.

With Number Lookup, validation of the numbers is made so SMS is never sent to an invalid number. In addition, Infobip proved to be an excellent provider even in the time of high network congestion. The IB platform is able to deliver messages even during the holidays, when the MNOs infrastructure is congested. While other banks are struggling to deliver their messages, HLB clients get theirs timely. All the traffic is followed by real time reporting, that previous SMS providers of the bank could not support.