ICT next frontier for Kenya banks

Technology is the next front on which banks will lay focus to win over a vast majority of Kenyans who still don't have accounts, writes the Daily Nation.

The introduction of mobile banking and convergence of the institutions with telecoms firms are also fast redefining the traditional banking hall mode. The ICT approach is therefore key to addressing the existing expansion and penetration challenges that banks have been facing owing to infrastructural and financial constraints.

“Technology continues to play a significant role in banking transformation in Africa. With most people being able to access mobile phone services, it is expected that financial institutions will leverage on such platforms to reach the huge number of people with mobile phones who lack bank accounts,” said James Mwangi, Equity Bank CEO.

Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, Yaseen Anwar, has said the number of real-time online branches had reached 6 700 by the end of 2009, according to Daily Times.

The transactional volume and value of e-payments from October to December 2009 stood at Rs46.4 million (R4 million) and Rs4.1 trillion (R356 billion), respectively, he said while speaking at the third International Mobile Commerce Conference in Pakistan last week.

Anwar added that Pakistan's financial sector had witnessed the transformation from a paper-based nationalised era to a technology-based sector. As far as e-banking in Pakistan is concerned, the statistics are showing encouraging trends, he said.

Transaction security firm Trusteer has introduced a remote forensics service designed to allow banks to diagnose if a client's PC has been infected with malware following incidents of suspected fraud, states The Register.

The Flashlight service is designed to allow strains of malware to be quickly identified without having to physically examine a possibly compromised computer. The service can also be used to collect samples, identify cyber crime command servers and block further attacks.

Early trials with the technology have revealed 90% to 95% of cyber crime attacks blamed on banking Trojans in the UK can be traced back to one of three malware families: Zeus, Silon (a UK-specific strain of Trojan) and Yaludle.