Citibank & SBI-A Comparison

Muthu Kumar
Jul 25, 2017 · 7 min read

I have been using both these banks for Online transfer for the past 5 years. Though SBI had improved a lot over the years there are few finer details that it needs to focus on in terms of customer satisfaction. I want to illustrate this by taking you through one flow i.e to add a beneficiary to the account.

HOME PAGE

SBI Home Page
Citibank Home Page

In SBI home page the indication on the Navigational Menu is very clear that you have to click on Payments/Transfers to do a transaction. In Citibank Home page its not that evident to find out how to transfer money as we are still in Home Page. It contains various clearly categorised entities like Banking etc. But those menu items are named using simple English and its very easy to figure out that we have to click on Banking if we need to do a Transfer.

TRANSFER FUNDS PAGE

SBI Transfer Funds Page
Citibank Transfer Funds Page

In SBI Payments / Transfers page has many options to choose from. Its basically categorised into two groups namely Within SBI and Outside SBI. Because of lack of clear categorisation we see that even credit card payments being added within this.

In case of Citibank its a clear grouping helps a lot in terms of Information Architecture. When you click on Banking in the side menu you end up reaching this page and your mouse will be exactly on Transfer Funds in this page. Its a very minute detail generally overlooked by designers. Transfer Funds are the most used function in a bank and its right over there when you reach from Banking page. There aren’t too many options as like SBI but the available options are distinct say Transfer to Citibank Account etc so that every one can understand what they are choosing. The Informational Architectural hierarchy is very clear which is clearly expressed visually. The Add New Payee button is very prominent and it calls for action.

ACCOUNT OF OTHERS

When you click on Account of Others in SBI Payments & Transfers page you reach this page. But here the menu name is changed to Third Party Transfer. Fortunately the header helps you to remember that you are still Within SBI-Account of Others. Even the bread crumbs are misleading. This is a basic best practice which is missed. The link Click here to add a new Intra-Bank beneficiary is less prominent when compared to the Add Payee button of Citibank. I will again get confused with the inconsistent copy between Third Party transfer, Within SBI-Accounts of Other & Intra Bank Beneficiary. There are other problems that I see between the account number and amount to be transferred and to the intra bank beneficiary account numbers position (Gestalt law of Proximity). But let me not get into that as I am only concerned about the flow of adding a payee to my account.

Citibank Add Payee Page

In case of Citibank there is a clear demarcation. If you want to pay someone who is already attached with the account then you can transfer funds in th e previous page itself. If you want to add a new payee then you click Add Payee in the previous page to land up in this page where you input the necessary details to add new payee. There is no clutter unlike SBI. The details that you need are just the Account Number & Branch location in a specific City.

SBI Security

In case of SBI you have to clear a security check when you add payee. An SMS will be sent to your connected phone so that you can became alert if you are not the one who is doing it. This is a great feature with SBI.

SBI Manage Beneficiary

After the security check we enter this page where we need to input details. Here we need to input four details to create a payee whereas in Citibank we just need three entities out of which one is a dropdown. Other problems that I found is that the change in Navigation Menu. Till last page we were under Payments / Transfers. But suddenly we have switched to Profile menu item. This jump will disrupt your mental model of Information Architecture. The other problem I find is the incoherency in the copy. In the left menu we have Manage Beneficiary and on the right hand header we have Manage Intra-Bank Beneficiary. Also I find it always confusing between Intra and Inter. It will be better if its more simpler like Add New Payee — Transfer to Citibank Account.

TRANFER FUNDS TO ACCOUNTS IN OTHER BANKS

Now lets see how this flow works.

SBI Inter Bank Payee
Citibank to Other Bank Account

The clarity in copy between SBI and Citibank can be clearly seen in their naming convention. In SBI its Inter-BankBeneficiary, where as in Citibank it is To Other Bank Account. I leave it to your own discretion to know which one is easier.

SBI Intermediate Page
Citibank Intermediate Page

Both Citibank & SBI have the same content. But look at the way how its chunked and visualised. In SBI you have to select a specific mode of payment and then click on Proceed to get to the next page.

I need not point out the same mistake of copy consistency between the menu and the header. From here you click on the Click here to add a new Inter-Bank Beneficiary link to add a new payee. In case of Citibank when you select the kind of transaction that you are going to do another field appears which asks for the name and IFSC code.

When I input the name and IFSC Code the Citibank searches for other details of the account and displays it.

The Citibank reaches this state after an profile password authentication.

If you look at it closely both the banks require the same inputs from the user. But look at the way how both the banks utilises it. Citibank asks for just the Name and IFSC code and pre populates the Bank Name, City, Branch,MICR Code using the collected info. This creates trust to the user which is most important in a money transaction. The user can cross verify those details if he wants to. Whereas in SBI’s case it asks for the Account payee Name, Account Number, Account Number Confirmation etc and under utilises the collected info to make an impression on the user.

The Citibank also asks the same information of confirming the account detail twice, but look at the way how it handles it.

Citibank

It converts the account number to asterisk once the cursor moves to the next input box.

SBI

The idea of a confirmation is to make the user type twice without him copying the same number from above. But it fails the basic function for which its created in case of SBI.

EYE TO DETAILS

In case of Citibank when the transaction amount is typed and the cursor moved out of the input box the decimal points are auto populated. If I want to add a decimal value then I can either add it on the go or after the zeros in decimal points are populated.

It doesn't happen so in SBI. Such eye to details helps the user to concentrate more on his job than being diverted by doing other things. I am not saying that Citibank’s user experience is the best, but SBI can improve a lot (by avoiding a lot of basic mistakes) if it really wants to make a difference to its customers.

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