South African financial services company Standard Bank says it has 1,000 agents across the country who are using smartphones to sign up 7,000 new account holders per day.
The bank says the initiative, part of its AccessBanking offering, allows for unbanked or underbanked South Africans, who earn R3,000 or less per month, to open up accounts.
Standard Bank agents set up stands in townships or rural areas where they use Android powered smartphones, supplied by the bank, to sign up customers who have their identification documents and proof of residence on them.
Standard Bank says its agents are able to do this thanks to a mobile app based on business software firm SAP’s ‘Sybase technology’, which draws information from enterprise systems straight onto handsets.
Using their smartphones, agents take photos of the potential bank holder’s ID photo page that contains the person’s number and barcode. Agents then use the internet-connected app to send the photo to Standard Bank, which verifies the person’s details.
Once the agent gets the all clear from the bank, which is said to happen within six minutes, they can sign up the person there and then.
Audrey Mothupi, head of inclusive banking at Standard Bank South Africa, has told ITWeb Africa that new transactional, savings, and lending accounts are opened daily using the SAP Sybase technology.
And Mothupi has said that for January 2013, 44% of AccessBanking transactional accounts and 41% of AccessBanking savings account were respectively signed up for using mobile technology.
“Standard Bank is the first bank in the world on the new SAP mobile origination platform. With a handheld mobile device, Standard Bank staff are able to open accounts for customers,” said Mothupi.
According to Julie Tregurtha, head of mobility sales at SAP South Africa, says its technology has helped Standard Bank acquire more customers apart from other more traditional means, such as customers visiting branches.
“Having agents on the field to transform Standard Bank into (a) mobile bank, going out and reaching the market rather than sitting in the branch and waiting for the customer was a significant philosophy change in the mindset of the bank,” she said.
According to SAP, once customers have a Standard Bank AccessAccount, they are also able to perform transactions such as person-to-person transfers and purchasing of electricity and airtime through their mobile phones at any time.
Customers can also perform transactions such as cash-in, cash-out and money transfers at Standard Bank AccessPoints, which operate through partnerships with informal traders already running businesses in their communities.
Thecla Mbongue, an analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media in South Africa, says the awareness of handsets’ role in banking in Africa has increased, especially following the emergence of mobile payment solutions such as M-pesa in Kenya in 2007.
“What is important is customer awareness. The service is addressing a population, which often has a low literacy level and is wary of banks in general,” Mbongue told ITWeb Africa.
“Therefore there is a need to provide face to face explanation and training and to be constantly on the ground,” Mbongue concluded.
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