During today's press conference, devoted to plans related to the development of mobile banking, Zbigniew Jagiełło, the president of PKO BP, boasted that the IKO application offered by this institution is already active on 5 million devices. At the same time, he declared that the bank's ambition is to reach 10 million application users within the next five years. This is interesting because PKO BP does not have that many clients. So how does the bank want to have more IKO users than personal account holders?

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As it turns out, PKO BP has a cunning plan to offer IKO to clients of other banks who will be able to use various functions of this application thanks to linking their payment card, issued by any institution, to it. Similarly, mobile payments can be used by e.g. users of Lidl or Żabka applications.

According to Michał Macierzyński, director of the digital services department at PKO BP, people who do not have an account at the bank he represents will be able to use IKO to, for example, buy public transport tickets, pay for parking and motorway travel, top up mobile phones, buy gift cards and use many other services that the bank is still working on. Only later will the bank encourage IKO users without an account to open an account with PKO BP, take a loan, etc. After the implementation of this project, IKO will become a serious competition for such fintechs as mPay or SkyCash.

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PKO BP does not reveal the specific date of making IKO available to customers without an account in this bank, but the works related to it are to be advanced. On the other hand, the function of tolls for motorways, announced today by cashless.pl, available in IKO on Android devices, is also to be included in the app for smartphones with iOS in October. At the same time, it will be possible to add accounts from other banks to IKO (this function is also already available on Android phones). In the latest IKO update available on Google Play, there is also an option to log in using face biometrics on selected devices.

During today's press conference, representatives of PKO BP also revealed several functions that will be in IKO in the coming weeks and months. We are talking, for example, about the possibility of connecting with a consultant from the application after logging in, thanks to which you will not have to undergo the verification process at the call center (such a service is already offered by e.g. mBank), the option of activating IKO on foreign telephone numbers, the function of managing investment funds and portfolio Treasury bonds, recurring payments and a request for a transfer with Blik. PKO BP also boasted about introducing its own sound, generated by IKO when receiving a push notification.