FNB changes tune on 22seven
First National Bank (FNB) issued a press statement today claiming to “allow access to 22seven.”
22seven is a money management tool launched at the end of January 2012 that saw a major backlash from South African banks.
Absa, Capitec, FNB, Nedbank, and Standard Bank all issued statements following the launch of 22seven warning users that the liability for online fraud becomes theirs if they give out their online banking credentials.
However, FNB has a feature in its online banking that allows its customers to set up secondary “read-only” profiles.
When asked about these profiles on 27 January 2012, FNB said: “The client is responsible for the transactions executed on the secondary profile. Each fraud case would be investigated and a decision related to liability is always made on a case by case basis.”
This latest statement from FNB is quite an about-face from the messaging they were sending out some weeks ago. Instead of just a dire warning, FNB now seems willing to educate users about the utility of the secondary profile feature.
The full statement is below:
In an ongoing attempt to create simple and convenient solutions for its customers, FNB has decided to enable 22seven limited access to its customers’ accounts.
“FNB has set a precedence of responding to our customer’s needs with innovative products and services. We are now providing a secure means to engage with 22seven in response to our customers’ need to learn more about their financial behavior,” says Lee-Anne van Zyl, CEO Online Banking at FNB.
FNB Online Banking customers can set-up a secondary user on their online banking profile, an option already available on FNB Online Banking. The secondary user profile has a more limited functionality and a different user name and password to the primary user.
“FNB customers who are signed up to the 22seven service should set-up a secondary user, select the accounts they wish to share and use a different username and password. If correctly set up to allow “view access” only, this will limit the exposure of client information to transaction history, balances and account numbers.” continues van Zyl.
If clients have already signed up to 22seven using their primary transactional profile, FNB recommends that they reset their primary user details with a new username and password. Clients can then set up a secondary user profile to use the 22seven service.
Van Zyl continues “It remains the responsibility of the client to ensure that their secondary user is set up to “view access” only. However, FNB will work closely with 22seven to ensure that our customers only use the view access only profile when using the 22seven service,” says van Zyl.
“It’s fantastic to collaborate with FNB to give our joint customers a view on their financial behaviour that they have never had before. It’s not surprising to me that FNB is the first South African bank to support the 22seven model as they have a history of innovation and supporting entrepreneurship,” concludes Christo Davel, CEO of 22seven.
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