A Context-Aware Multi-Channel Messaging Framework for African Banks: Design and Implementation

Customers of Financial Service Institutions (FSIs) subscribe to different types of alerts occurring on their accounts. The Single Channel Messaging (SCM) model is predominantly used by most Banks in Africa. However, the number of supported platforms and messaging formats limits the SCM Model and in the case where FSIs make use of multiple channels, these are not integrated. In addition, SCM does not provide a way of distinguishing between communication channels based on urgency or priority of the messages which need to be delivered to the customers. Consequently, this research work investigated and reviewed the existing approaches, publicly available platforms, web and mobile applications used by FSIs for interacting with their clients. Based on this, we derived the technical requirements for the implementation of a model for Multi-Channel Messaging (MCM) that addresses the weaknesses of SCM. Further, in this paper we present the proposed framework for the MCM model. The model was implemented using the problem-centred approach of the Design Science Research Methodology to derive the requirements of the MCM system from the SCM system, we further used Use-Case evaluation method to analyse the outcome of the design.