There's nothing like competition to get the creative juices flowing. Standard Bank would have proved that earlier this week with the launch of its newly revamped Internet banking offering, scheduled for Monday.
The new look site will apparently feature new functionality such as immediately effective stop cheques and debit orders via Internet banking. The new offering will also include an opt-in mail service, where clients can specify a date and mail account to which they'd like bank statements and balances sent.
But Standard Bank clients will have to wait a few more days to experience the thrill of the added functionality - as a disclaimer on the Standard Bank Web site puts it: "The new site has been delayed to enable us to do additional performance tuning, and will be available in the next few days. We apologise for any inconvenience we may have caused."
Carol Mileman, head of Internet Banking, explains that although the site was stress-tested by Standard Bank staff, its performance when opened up to the bank's 160 000-odd Internet banking clients was not wholly satisfactory.
"We weren't happy with the throughput of transactions, so we've been re-testing the environment internally." Mileman is confident the site will go live before Friday.
The bank notified its customers of the impending launch by mailshot on 7 February, and as an incentive to view the site, offered a number of prizes to the first 500 visitors to the revamped site on the scheduled launch date, 12 February.
Mileman says that about 300 clients visited the site when it first went live. "Those will all still qualify for entry into the competition, and as soon as the site is live, we'll have a countdown to when the competition resumes."
Standard Bank's closest online competitor, eBucks.com's eFinancial Services, launched in October, featuring similar functionality, including the options of balances, statements and account payment reminders via SMS.
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