FNB’s eWallet service approaches landmark
First National Bank (FNB) says that its eWallet service is approaching a landmark of R2 billion sent to customers since its inception in 2009.
The eWallet enables FNB customers to send money to anyone with a valid South African cellphone number.
In an interview with BusinessTech, CEO of eWallet Solutions, Yolande van Wyk said that more than one million eWallets have been created – with more than R1.9 billion paid into them since 2009. Transactions exceeded 300,000 per month. “We’ve got consistent growth; I would love to see accelerated growth,” she said.
Looking at future growth, van Wyk said: “We have a few things in the pipeline. Remittances is strong locally, while we are also targeting remittances internationally.”
FNB noted that 61% of funds are sent to provinces other than the one where the user resides.
The service is available in Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland.
The CEO pointed to a current partnership with social media platform MXit. “MXit users can already purchase ‘moola’ using their eWallet. We are working on a few other things with them.”
Van Wyk said that while a difficult task, “more difficult than we originally thought”, FNB aims to grow its partnership base with other retailers, like the one it already has with PEP stores.
In January, FNB went live with PEP whereby any South African consumer with a bar-coded South African ID could deposit money, send money, withdraw money, make payments and purchase goods at any PEP store in the country.
“We want to add other retailers into the network. It does take time though,” van Wyk said. However, she added that FNB was close to going live with another retailer of similar size to PEP.
The eWallet holds a maximum balance of R3,000 – up from an initial purse of R1,000 at launch in 2009.
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