Austria’s Erste Group Unveils New Platform to Improve Digital Banking for Businesses

Following the launch of its popular consumer digital banking service, George, Erste Group, one of the largest financial institutions (FIs) in Austria, has unveiled George Business for businesses and corporate clients.

The Vienna-based bank, which serves over 16 million clients across seven countries and is one of the largest financial service providers in Central and Eastern Europe, announced in a Thursday (April 13) press release emailed to PYMNTS that the service will first be offered in its home base of Austria before being rolled out to other markets. And in the long term, the goal is to replace all local business banking offerings within the group with George Business.

“George Business is the business banking of a new era. Like George, George Business is very easy and intuitive to use and has a high level of stability,” Hans Unterdorfer, chief corporates officer of Erste Bank Oesterreich, said about the launch.

Erste Group Chief Platform Officer Maurizio Poletto added, “In the same way we have created the biggest digital banking platform for private customers in our region, reaching nine million onboarded customers in the last years, we have now the same ambition to build the most modern and up-to-date digital banking platform for businesses.”

Per the release, the “game-changing” business banking solution will support companies that need “comprehensive financial management,” including large industrial firms, property management companies, real estate project developers and handicraft businesses.

“Also new is the George Business app for iOS and Android, which allows entrepreneurs to keep track of all accounts, cards and financing as well as approve and create orders while on the move,” the press release added.

Corporate clients can also expect a fully digitized registration process, and within minutes get access to an active bank account and the George Business platform on which they can sign authorizations and access card and multi-account management services, among others.

This solution is likely to prove critical for businesses, particularly small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), whose revenue, profit margins and sales were hard hit by the pandemic and have had to rethink their business models to keep pace with digital transformation.

One area where this digital shift has been noticeable is in the way SMBs are engaging with their banks. According to a recent PYMNTS report on digital-first banking, about 43% of SMBs surveyed said they have increased their usage of online banking services in the past year, while 40% said they were using more mobile banking.

Banks Bolster Austria Real-Time Payments

As PYMNTS wrote earlier this year, Austria is a front-runner in the European real-time payments space, with an increasing number of participants helping to meet the growing demand from consumers and businesses for quick and seamless cross-border payments.

This includes Erste Group, which is one of the first banking institutions in Europe to have adopted real-time payments, joining the pan-European instant payment scheme SCT Inst when it launched in 2017 to enable ultra-fast euro payments across the 36 countries within the Single European Payment Area (SEPA).

As of March 2023, the multinational group is one of the 443 FIs and payment service providers (PSPs) from Austria participating in SCT Inst, representing the second-highest number of participants from a European country behind Germany and ahead of France and Italy.

And potential for instant payments adoption and usage in the country is projected to keep rising moving forward, with Austria’s real-time payments volume expected to hit 593 million by 2026, up from 141 million in 2021, according to the PYMNTS study with The Clearing House, “The Real-Time Payments World Map.”

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