BNP Paribas is introducing virtual reality (VR) based services designed to enhance and streamline customer experience.

As the Group drives ahead with its digital transformation, VR technology – already in use at several of the Bank’s businesses, including Retail Banking, Real Estate and Insurance – is opening up exciting new prospects. 

State-of-the-art VR technologies, which enable visualisation, projection, experimentation and personalisation of processes and experiences, can be applied to many fields.  As part of its ongoing digital transformation, against the background of the changes taking place in working practices, BNP Paribas is now giving customers the opportunity to incorporate VR techniques into the way they run their banking operations, with new tools designed to assist their account management and decision-making.

Bertrand Cizeau, Head of BNP Paribas Group Communications, underlines: “Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality tools will gradually become part of our customers’ daily lives, providing new kinds of interfaces between our various publics and our services. At BNP Paribas, we’re extremely interested in these new technologies, they are an integral part of our Innovation policy, and we firmly intend to draw on them in order to create ground-breaking services designed to further streamline the Customer Journey and improve the overall Customer Experience.”

The first VR-based solutions available to BNP Paribas customers

  • French Retail Banking has launched a VR-based app which gives its customers a taste of tomorrow’s banking, including consulting bank transaction records and following through the various steps of a real estate purchase in Virtual Reality mode.
  • BNP Paribas Real Estate has developed, in partnership with French startup Vectuel & RF Studio, a ‘teleportation’ capsule called the POD, which enables prospective purchasers to port themselves inside a new apartment or building under construct ion or for sale and view it in 3D and 360°.
  • The ‘Mobile Protect VR’ tool created by BNP Paribas Cardif is a fun VR experience designed to raise customers’ awareness of the benefits of insuring the mobile devices which are such valuable items in their lives.
  • All these solutions will be on display at the second annual Viva Technology Fair, to be held in Paris from 15 to 17 June, of which BNP Paribas is one of the main partners.

BNP Paribas, contributing to the development of Virtual Reality 

  • In 2016, in partnership with the French annual summer photography festival ‘Les Rencontres d’Arles’ and Fisheye, BNP Paribas launched the VR Arles Festival, the first arts festival dedicated to Virtual Reality.
  • BNP Paribas has been the main partner of mk2 VR, the first permanent venue in France dedicated entirely to Virtual Reality, since it opened in Paris in December 2016.
  • At the 2017 French Open tournament, BNP Paribas, the world number one partner to tennis, will invite fans to take part in a virtual tennis match via the We Are Tennis Virtual Reality Challenge.

Last but not least, BNP Paribas has this year for the first time produced the Group corporate film using Virtual Reality techniques. The film plunges viewers into the banking universe and invites them to enjoy a full-immersion experience.