Steward Bank in Zimbabwe has announced that it has rid itself of all manual transfers and gone exclusive with mobile and online banking.

As reported by TechZim, the bank said it is no longer going to be processing manual RTGS and internal transfer application forms. Instead, these transactions will be done exclusively on their internet banking platform.

According to the report, the country's NMB Bank was one of the first banks to move to exclusive online banking and mobile banking for processing these transfers.

To do RTGS or internal transfers, customers will have to sign up for their mobile banking or online banking services.

Steward Bank's move comes in the wake of increasing mobile banking in the continent, with a number of banking and mobile money institutions adopting mobile-first operations.

According to Oxford's 2016 'consolidating Africa's mobile banking revolution' report, the financial services sector in Africa is changing rapidly, and the mobile banking revolution is a key driver of this change.

"Mobile financial services have advanced in waves, beginning with payments and transfers before progressing into virtual savings, followed by credit, cross-border transfers and more recently into new services such as insurance.

"M-Pesa, Kenya's digital financial service is the best known, and similar initiatives are underway in many other African countries, including Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire."

This year, GSMA's mobile economy report forecasted that Sub-Sahara Africa alone will have more than half a billion unique mobile subscribers by 2020, by which time around half the population will subscribe to a mobile service.

GSMA says the region alone accounts for nearly a tenth of the global mobile subscriber base and is expected to grow faster than every other region in Africa over the next five years.