Two of South Africa’s top banks Nedbank and Standard Bank have recently made deals to develop banking apps for Microsoft’s Windows Phone smartphone platform.
Nedbank has announced plans to present transactional banking apps for both the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 by 2013. In June this year, HumanIPO reported the bank launched the Nedbank App Suite for its staff ahead of a major release for public utility in August.
The currently app already operates on Apple, Android and BlackBerry devices.
Standard Bank also made a move in June with the unveiling of BlackBerry, Android and Apple compliant mobile banking applications. The bank had an October app release for Windows 8 in the pipeline, while the Widows Phone 8 version availability is yet to be announced.
“It’s important for platform developers to attract local banks to their operating systems given demand from South African consumers for transactional banking apps,” says techno expert Craig Wilson, from TechCentral.
Other South African Banks of importance, such as First National Bank (FNB) and Absa are not as keen to engage in the Windows mobile application development as their competitors.
“(We are still) evaluating the Windows platform and ecosystem,” Farren Roper, FNB business operations head, told TechCentral. The priorities clearly lie with provision of current needs than coming first with novelties. Roper has commended this recent news of Windows banking apps as “premature”.
Absa is still in the process of making their own apps available to consumers. These services are said to be available by the end of 2012 for Android and iOS devices. The bank is still unclear as to when the expansions of its app catering will be taking place.
