Technology behind SA’s leading banking apps

Gur Geva, co-founder and CEO of iiDENTIFii.

---

A recent survey announced South Africa’s leading banking apps, and the top scorers illustrate the technology trends shaping digital financial services.

iiDENTIFii, a South-African born biometric identity verification (IDV) provider, has played a pivotal role in the building of the infrastructure for two of these top-scoring banking apps. In working with banks to create practical and intuitive digital experiences, iiDENTIFii has pinpointed the critical focus areas in the market.

“Successful and customer-friendly digital banking can be distilled to two key strengths: user experience and security," says Gur Geva, co-founder and CEO of iiDENTIFii.

Online banking customers are increasingly favouring biometric identification processes in their digital banking, as opposed to cumbersome, lengthy login experiences. iiDENTIFii’s pioneering biometric face identification platform, for example, is used for onboarding new customers, authentication of returning customers and beyond.

“From the start, we have believed that secure identity should not come at the cost of customer experience. This is why we encourage banks to build experiences that are as fast as they are safe. We do this with the understanding that a slow onboarding experience will result in friction for the customer, which leads to drop-offs during the process,” adds Geva.

“iiDENTIFii’s technology is one of the most user-friendly solutions on the market, which is hardware-agnostic and omnichannel. This means that a customer can begin onboarding on one device and continue on another. Onboarding is automated and consists of four simple steps,” explains Geva.

While the banking user experience needs to be simple, it also has to be safe. As more and more South African citizens embrace digital banking, safety needs to be guaranteed as more users are onboarded and banking apps scale.

“The fact that leading South African banks are choosing iiDENTIFii illustrates the importance of biometric identity and the need to apply these solutions in a scalable way. We are currently the only enterprise-grade provider of identity verification face biometrics on the continent,” says Geva.

Banking apps will become more and more essential to the banking experience in South Africa. The infrastructure underpinning these apps needs to be secure, scalable and simple for customers to use. Striking this balance will ensure banks keep their customers' data and funds safe.