SA bank goes mobile in Namibia

Namibia is only the second African country outside South Africa to launch the bank's innovative and cost-effective cell phone banking channel. Botswana was the first, posting impressive subscriber and usage figures since the launch of the service in November last year.

FNB Namibia will have the second mover advantage in the country's cell phone banking market, allowing it to capitalise on the market awareness that was created since the launch of the first cell phone banking offering, in December 2006.

The bank 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 bank’s Namibian cell phone banking adoption will be customer registrations and transactions. Target markets include the youth, the mainstream and agricultural markets, as well as bank staff.

Changing the mindset

"Our efforts will focus on getting the cell phone 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 cell phone banking into customer behaviour that embraces cell phone 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 the bank’s cell phone banking offering in Namibia.

FNB Namibia will offer popular transactions like prepaid top ups and balance enquiries for free until the end of June 2007.

The bank opted for the user-friendly, menu-based USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) technology only. This is a company 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 cell phone 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 cell phone banking experience, whenever and wherever, remains unchanged," he says.