Telecom Lead Africa: Standard Bank’s AccessBanking – on SAP mobile platform – has attracted more than 550,000 new customers since its inception in March 2012.
Standard Bank’s AccessBanking is aimed at addressing the banking needs of the previously unbanked.
SAP mobile platform integrates SAP and third-party back-end systems, which allows users to create mobile apps to extend the information from enterprise systems straight onto mobile devices.
The app enables sales agents to sign-up via a portable mobile device and open a bank account for customers within a few minutes. Support for multiple devices and security management component are other features.
Peter Wharton Hood, deputy chief executive, Standard Bank Group, says the bank is currently opening up to 7,000 new accounts a day via SMS technology, in less than six minutes per transaction.
Pfungwa Serima, CEO, SAP Africa, says it looks forward to seeing the continued success of the implementation across the continent.
Mobile banking is yet to take off in India.
Out of 1.2 billion population, around 1.72 crore people are using mobile banking services in the country and private bank HDFC Bank has the largest number of such customers.
As on October 2012, nearly 1.72 crore customers in India are utilizing mobile banking services among the 42 banks which provide the facility.
“Mobile banking adoption has accelerated at unprecedented rates, rivaling the speed-to-adoption of such consumer “must have” products as telephones, dishwashers, automobiles, and color TVs,” said Ed O’Brien, director of Mercator Advisory Group’s Banking Channels Advisory Service, recently.
Meanwhile, Visa announced bank-grade managed service platform for mobile money, Visa Mobile Managed Service, designed to enable financial institutions and mobile network operators to deploy mobile money programs in India.
Uttam Nayak, Visa’s Group Country Manager for South Asia, said: “Our new mobile managed service reduces time, complexities and costs for India’s financial institutions and telecom operators to set up mobile financial services. Once again Visa is increasing the reach of electronic payments beyond tier 1 and tier 2 cities by driving financial inclusion through affordable access and low cost acceptance. It’s part of our continued push to develop India’s payments ecosystem.”
