Standard Bank of South Africa last week Thursday launched its mobile banking transactional app to its customers. This comes barely a fortnight following Nedbank’s launch of a mobile banking app suite to its staff for the pilot phase.
South Africa has over 5 million smartphone users and the number is growing steadily. The number of active tablet users is estimated at 500,000 and is expected to rise sharply based on research.
It is with these numbers in mind that Standard Bank’s Itumeleng Monale, Head of Self-Service Channels at Standard Bank South Africa, stated: “In this increasingly digital age, Standard Bank is responding to the evolving needs of our customers by providing yet another convenient channel of banking.”
The bank now has over 1 million customers active in online banking, and close to 2 million cellphone banking customers.
“We are now giving our customers even more ways to bank with us using the technology at their disposal, improving on simplicity and ultimately their convenience,” says Ms Monale.
“Customers are empowered with the app to do their banking anywhere and at any time,” she added.
Standard Bank in a statement said the app will have enhanced security that links the phone to the electronic banking profile once downloaded. This is similar to the First National Bank’s app implying the users’ accounts can only be accessed from own phones.
Other services wouldn’t require a customer to log into the app to use them, such as locating the nearest Standard Bank South Africa branch, ATM, or AccessPoint, and seeing a map of how to get there, calculating instalment payments for home or car loans, and accessing numbers to report lost or stolen cards.
The new app is available for download to anyone using an iPhone, Blackberry or Android device. The tablet app is scheduled for release soon, according to the bank.
