South Africa’s First National Bank (FNB) has announced plans to be a mobile virtual network operator with the launch of its mobile SIM card offering later this month.

News of the announcement follows FNB’s pilot with thousands of its employees, which started in November last year.

According to a statement the bank will expand its FNB Connect offering to now include mobile voice and data products. Currently FNB Connect offers ADSL and 3G data rewards.

FNB also has over 2 million customers topping up with airtime and bundles monthly and over 285,000 discounted smart devices sold since 2011.

With the new mobile services offering SIM cards will be sold separately from devices and customers will be able to choose from a range of mobile voice and data products, reads the statement.

In addition customers will also have the option to easily port their existing cellphone number through FNB’s electronic banking channels.

Commenting on FNB’s move CEO Jacques Celliers said, “Mobility and banking innovation are now synonymous in the minds of FNB customers, we are excited to launch a South African first for banking via FNB Connect as the next step in our digital evolution.”

“The core offering will be the Flexi Package, which is unique as customers can manage their account by creating their own mobile package and have the ability to change it every month,” said Ravesh Ramlakan, CEO of FNB Connect.

“The banking landscape has evolved tremendously and with the help of technology we are able to better enrich the customer experience. We believe that this valuable service will assist customers with the opportunity to do their banking and mobile services from one platform. This is yet another innovation aimed at offering our customers the benefit of integrated and seamless mobile services which interoperates across existing platforms,” Ramlakan added.

FNB enters a very competitive South African telecoms market with main operators Vodacom and MTN leading the country’s mobile space.

Combined the two operators make up three quarters of the southern African nation’s mobile subscriber numbers.

According to the GSMA South Africa has some 80 million mobile connections.