The service was introduced in 2003 but will reportedly be discontinued as from July 8.
A bank statement said: “With the evolution of technology that customers have at their disposal, Standard Bank found that the customers using WAP based banking now make up only 0.59 per cent of our total mobile banking registered customer base.”
Standard Bank customers can still use their smartphones for banking through the subscription cost free mobile banking application, which is available on Android, BlackBerry and iPhone platforms.
The bank’s banking application also allows customers to execute a number of different transactions, which includes accessing services such as calculators, financial indicators, and a location based service to locate ATMs and branches without having to log in.
“We have seen a great take-up of this channel of banking since it was introduced last year. As [of] June 2013, we have close to 170,000 unique users.”
“Customers can also transact using cellphone banking through a USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) string, which is available on any mobile. This service is also free subscription costs...” said Standard Bank.