Ecobank to offer mobile banking in 33 of its markets
ECOBANK followed yesterday in the footsteps of Standard Chartered, announcing plans to lure new clients through the paperless opening of bank accounts in Africa as mobile and other digital platforms sweep the continent.
Ecobank, a pan-African bank in which the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) has an interest, said it would roll out the application in 33 of its 36 markets on the continent.
Ecobank is active in markets such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Angola and South Africa among others.
Standard Chartered recently launched a mobile banking platform for its African operations, while in Zimbabwe, Barclays already has a thriving digital banking operation and Ecobank’s announcement shows its keenness to benefit from this.
“Through its purchasing power and Ecobank’s partnerships with Visa and MasterCard, the Ecobank Mobile App will be an accepted means of payment,” Ecobank group chief executive Ade Ayeyemi said. “With its removal of barriers to entry and affordable price points, the Ecobank Mobile App will empower the consumer to be on the move.”
The bank said the paperless application would create an instant and convenient way of banking and leveraged the power of digital to deliver convenience to banking clients.
It said the app would enable transactions such as payments, fund transfers, as well as receiving money from merchants using the bank’s technological platform, Masterpass QR.
It said opening an XpressAccount was an instant and easy transaction done online.
Ecobank head of consumer banking Patrick Akinwuntan said depositors would also be able to pay in store with their phones as e-commerce slowly expanded in Africa.
In June, Standard Chartered said it was expanding its mobile and digital banking platform to more African markets, including Botswana, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. The bank has already rolled out its mobile banking initiative in Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Growing market
The Boston Consulting Group said in a report, “African Consumer Sentiment 2016: The promise of new markets”, that the rise of the mobile financial services sector across Africa heralded a new market segment for the industry.
The group said as more than half of all Africans owned a cellphone, mobile banking would be their first experience with financial services.
It said by 2019, an estimated 250 million unbanked Africans would have cellphones and a monthly income of at least $500 (R6 959) – generating a projected $1.5 billion in revenue from mobile financial services.
Standard Chartered expects that by early 2017, “at least 35 percent of all client transactions to be done through online channels”, and sees this as “significantly advancing the transformation of banking.”