SA's banking sector reports a surge in demand for online and cellphone banking products, with this trend expected to continue.
Three of SA's big four banks - Absa, First National Bank (FNB) and Standard Bank - agree that online banking and cellphone transactions are growing at an impressive rate.
Absa says cellphone banking customers have increased by 113%, to 1.5 million, while Internet banking customers grew 11%, to 1.1 million customers.
In the past financial year, transactions worth more than R79 billion a month, which translates to over R800 billion a year, were undertaken by Absa customers through the Internet and cellphone banking channels.
Absa managing executive of digital channels Christo Vrey says: “Customers are looking for banking that is accessible anywhere, anytime. Over the next few years, we expect this to grow even more as customers become more comfortable with banking via digital channels and technology offers even more functionality.”
“There hasn't been one channel that has disappointed us,” says Tumi Monale, Standard Bank's director of direct channels. Monale was unable to provide specific figures, but says online and cellphone banking is growing phenomenally off the back of latent demand.
She adds that this is organic growth, and the bank is not actively driving the products.
Last November, World Wide Worx research revealed that the number of people banking from their cellphones had exceeded that of people banking from their PCs in SA.
More than a quarter of bank customers use their cellphones for services ranging from informational transaction types, such as balance enquiries, to financial transaction types, which include account payments.
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