After two years of restructuring its online presence, Absa bank, now with over 1.25 million members, has finally launched a new online platform for its customers.
The site, although still in Beta, focuses on providing financial management services.
Absa says the radical overhaul that has been in development for two years represents a distinct step-change from what was a purely transactional online service to a comprehensive suite of transactional and non-transactional services.
The new online platform also serves as a financial planning tool essential for managing monthly expenditure.
Absa’s head of retail markets Arrie Rautenbach said: “Absa Online, and Absa Online for Business, as the services are known, are designed to offer customers a single view of their financial affairs — a portal to one’s entire financial world.”
According to Absa, it initially looked to have an online platform that would give users a chance to use transactional and non-transactional tools such as checking bank balance as well as send cash to other accounts.
This is a turnaround for the bank that earlier this year seemed to oppose the use of 22Seven, an online financial management tool, to access its members banking information.
This new website seems to put 22seven in direct competition with the bank. The only advantage would be that with 22seven, users get to link and view different bank accounts from different banks.
With hints of apps coming in the future, the bank said, it has a number of innovations set to be designed later this year to further refine the personal financial management capabilities and give customers an even richer banking experience.
The service has also been designed specifically with Apple and Samsung tablet devices in mind. This means it will render and function intuitively with these touch-technology devices, Absa said.
The project took 140 developers and over 450,000 man-hours. Absa launched the site after a trial that involved 36,000 bank employees.
