Standard Bank's online business transactions surged 16% in the past year, with around R4.8 billion changing hands for the period, but says bandwidth remains a touchy issue in developing the service.
The bank says the increase in online business transactions also reflects the continuing economic growth by the country - the longest period of such expansion in 60 years.
It says it has 30 000 business customers who transact around R400 million each month. Companies switching from cheque to electronic payments is also driving growth.
"Over 800 000 jobs were created in the non-agricultural sectors in the last year alone," says Brett Cronje, Standard Bank's Business Online operations director. "A substantial portion of those new employers and employees bank with us, which has a spill-over effect in terms of increased salary payments, debit orders and policy payments."
Cronje believes the growth is a sign of a healthy electronic platform and customer confidence in the medium, but increased bandwidth capacity could help spur the uptake of the service.
Irritating bandwidth
"Bandwidth remains an issue in SA for two reasons. Firstly, it helps speed up responses so that transactions can be done quickly and securely. Secondly, we often download code and updates to clients' PCs and the slow bandwidth can cause problems. However, we have grown better at managing it," he says.
Cronje also says while in SA the slow bandwidth remains an "irritant", in other African countries it is a serious issue.
"In other countries, where we have an interest in offering the online service, bandwidth is virtually non-existent and this seriously hampers the use of the service," he says.
However, Cronje says that in SA bandwidth is only one of a number of issues customers have to get used to. Others include the change to using new technology, confidence in it, and keeping up to date with the changes.
"Customers enjoy the fantastic convenience and benefits of transacting online, which outweighs any concerns they might have about online fraud."
"Businesses are more vulnerable to the problem of identity theft through social engineering, or so-called white-collar crime," says Herman Singh, Standard Bank's director of architecture and technology engineering.
This risk can largely be overcome by clients exercising segregation of duties and good financial management practice, he explains.
Security shake-up
Standard Bank says of the R400 billion transacted online each month, less than R30 000 is lost through white-collar fraud.
"This is less than a rand for every R10 million transacted," Cronje claims.
These incidences are mostly perpetrated by people inside the respective organisations, who abuse positions of trust.
"Creation of phantom employees or creditors, and the altering of account numbers, are the most common problems reported," Cronje says.
For this reason, Standard Bank encourages customers to get their financial management practices in order in terms of segregation of duties, and proper sign-off procedures.
The implementation of these also has a big impact on socially engineered theft, it says.
Cronje is an advocate of balance between customer friendliness and technology to enhance security.
"If the security processes involved become too complex, customers tend to become lax in their behaviour and by-pass them, and the objective is lost."
Cronje says clients unable to make last-minute payments because security procedures are too difficult will be forced to adopt emergency measures, which often involve no security at all. He adds that a final problem is the practice of writing down passwords that are too hard to remember.
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