Digital customers contributed twice as much revenue as non-digital customers, according to OCBC, which expects 60 percent of its full client base to digitally convert by 2023.

The bank defined digital customers as those that have used online banking services at least once in the last three months. In addition to doubling the contributions of non-digital customers, OCBC’s cost-income ratio has also been driven down by six percentage points.

Digital sales represented 30 percent of OCBC’s revenue in the first half of 2019, up from a mere 6 percent in 2014, with various initiatives in place including self-service kiosks, a robe-investing platform and card-less ATM cash withdrawals with QR codes.

Currently, around half of OCBC's 2.5 million clients can be considered digital and the bank expects the figure to reach 60 percent by 2023.

Digital Banking License?

The allure of obtaining a digital banking license remains for OCBC which is in active conversations with potential partners, according to the bank’s chief operating officer Ching Wei Hong.

«We're quite pleasantly surprised that we've been getting a lot more phone calls than us making the calls out. We've been very open and friendly, talking to those people,» Ching said at a recent media briefing. «There has to be good working chemistry, it's not just (a partnership) for the pure dollars and cents.»

Singapore will look to ramp up its digital banking industry with the Monetary Authority of Singapore having announced that up to five licenses would be issued, including two for retail banking and three for wholesale banking.