{"id":34336,"date":"2013-03-26T10:51:06","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T08:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=34336"},"modified":"2013-03-26T11:12:34","modified_gmt":"2013-03-26T09:12:34","slug":"absa-banking-app-finally-ready","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/34336\/absa-banking-app-finally-ready\/","title":{"rendered":"Absa banking app finally ready?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Absa<\/a>, South Africa\u2019s largest bank by client numbers, says it is close to launching its banking application for smartphones.<\/p>\n

The bank, which boasts\u00a012.2 million clients,\u00a0had originally earmarked a launch date of Q4 2011, but that was extended into 2012 due to problems with its back-end system. The delay was extended further into Q1 2013.<\/p>\n

The app was trialled by a select group of Absa\u2019s staff in November.<\/p>\n

Arrie Rautenbach<\/a>, Absa head of retail banking told BusinessTech: \u00a0\u201cA media invite to the launch of Absa\u2019s transactional banking app, will be distributed shortly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group would be last of the major banks to unveil an app. First National Bank (FNB<\/a>) was first to market in South Africa when it launched in July 2011.<\/p>\n

In delivering its results for the six months ending December 2012,\u00a0in early March, CEO\u00a0Michael Jordaan<\/a>\u00a0told BusinessTech that the bank has 364,511 devices paired with the FNB App, adding that this did not just include downloads.<\/p>\n

He also noted that the value of FNB App transactions in last six months amounted to R9.2 billion, while roughly 140,000 devices had been sold since inception, and 130,000 by the end of December 2012, with the group selling just over 50,000 smart devices in the six month reporting period.<\/p>\n

Rival financial institutions Nedbank<\/a>, and Standard Bank both launched apps in 2012.<\/p>\n

Absa journey<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absa embarked on a digital journey with an upgrade to its online platform \u2013 absa.co.za \u2013 in 2011. This was followed by a refresh of its ATM software and hardware capabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next step in this journey will be the launch of mobile app which is currently in a beta phase pilot with a hundred pre-selected Absa staff members,\u201d Rautenbach\u00a0said in February, following the release of the group\u2019s annual results ending December 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of biggest growth was seen in cellphone banking client base which grew by over one million customers last year to 4.2 million.\u00a0 Over 40% of personal loans approved were initiated via digital channels.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt that digital is the future of banking, hence Absa is committed to building significant digital capacity and capabilities in order to make the lives of its customers much easier,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

More on banking apps<\/h3>\n

FNB\u2019s digital boom<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Absa banking app \u2013 last out the door<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Absa intros LCD, NFC card<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Digital the future of banking: Absa<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Absa intros LCD, NFC card<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Absa, South Africa\u2019s largest bank by client numbers, says it is close to launching its banking application for smartphones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":15479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[29,3519,76,26,1639,1799,499],"class_list":["post-34336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-absa","tag-arrie-rautenbach","tag-fnb","tag-headline","tag-michael-jordaan","tag-nedbank","tag-standard-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34336"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34344,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34336\/revisions\/34344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}