First National Bank (FNB) is strengthening its competitive position on the African continent with the launch of its cellphone-banking offering in Namibia on Monday set to herald a new era in the country’s electronic banking system.
Namibia is the second country outside South Africa to launch FNB’s innovative and cost-effective cellphone banking channel, with Botswana posting impressive subscriber and usage figures since its launch of the service in November last year.
FNB Namibia will have the second mover advantage in the country’s cellphone banking market, allowing it to capitalise on the market awareness that was created since the launch of the first cellphone banking offering in December 2006.
FNB will offer the service through Namibia’s dominant mobile operator, MTC, which has in excess of 600 000 customers, more than half-a-million of whom are prepaid users. However, interesting times lie ahead for Namibia with the recent launch of Cell One, the country’s second mobile network operator.
FNB mobile and transact solutions CEO Len Pienaar says the key drivers for FNB Namibia’s cellphone banking adoption will be customer registrations and transactions. Target markets include the youth, the mainstream and agricultural markets, as well as bank staff.
“Our efforts will focus on getting the cellphone banking mindset right by addressing customer concerns around ease of use, affordable access to the service and safety. Through this exercise, we will turn improved market awareness of cellphone banking into customer behaviour that embraces cellphone banking as a convenient banking channel,” says Pienaar.
He says, in addition to the convenience, the bank will pursue a competitive pricing strategy as one of the key differentiators of FNB Namibia’s cellphone banking offering.
FNB Namibia will offer popular transactions like prepaid top ups and balance enquiries for free until the end of June 2007.
FNB Namibia opted for the user-friendly, menu-based USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) technology only. This is an FNB milestone, with FNB Namibia being the first operation to launch without the phase one SMS offering that is provided in South Africa and Botswana.
Leonard Haynes, FNB Namibia’s CEO says that while FNB’s experience in running the cellphone banking channel in South Africa will put FNB Namibia in a strong position, the market dynamics in the two countries are not the same.
“Despite market differences, our objective to offer the greatest customer benefit through a convenient cellphone banking experience, whenever and wherever, remains unchanged,” says Haynes. — I-Net Bridge