Bank channels and collections are the places where a bank deals with its customers directly, and the software behind each of them. A channel is any way in which a customer reaches the bank, such as the branch, the ATM, the app, the call centre or a WhatsApp message. Collections is the work of getting borrowers to repay loans on time.
Consider a retired railway employee in Visakhapatnam who banks with a public sector bank. In one month, she deals with her bank in several places. She updates her passbook at the branch, where the cashier uses branch banking software. She withdraws cash at an ATM. She asks the bank's app on which date her pension will be credited. The answer comes from an AI banking assistant, software that reads her account and replies in plain language.
She also has a small loan for repairs to her house. One month, she misses its EMI. The next day, her phone rings with a reminder call. The voice on the call belongs to software, not to a person. It is an AI collection voice agent, a part of the bank's debt collection software. That software decides who to remind, when and how. If a loan stays unpaid for about ninety days, the software moves it to recovery and legal action.
All of these channels read and write the same records in the bank's core banking system. So the ATM, the app and the collection call all know the same balance and the same overdue EMI.
Much of the newer software here is built on AI customer service agents, which hold conversations with customers on their own. Collections is where the rules matter most. The RBI limits when and how lenders may call borrowers, and a software agent must follow those rules on every call.