Banks eye cellphone users
FNB announced on Wednesday that it is not only matching Absa’s offer of free cellphone banking but also bettering it in that there is no time limit.
Absa introduced free cellphone banking two years ago and has kept extending it ever since. Absa’s free cellphone banking is available to both individual and business users but the no-charge offer is limited until the end of this year.
Asked if in the coming year customers should expect to be charged, an Absa representative said: “Our next pricing review will be at the end of the year and at that point we will make a decision based on whether we have met the targets we have set ourselves or not.”
FNB, on the other hand, announced that it would be introducing zero transactional fees for cellphone banking on June 1, with a commitment that the offer is not limited to any time period.
“The price reductions we are introducing today should encourage our customers to change their transactional behaviour by using affordable electronic options to do their day-to-day banking,” said James Fowle, FNB’s pricing executive.
Cellphone banking allows customers to view their account statements, make balance enquiries, make payments, transfer money between their accounts and make purchases of prepaid airtime. All of this is done through an SMS that leads to an easy-to-navigate menu.
Nedbank and Standard Bank are yet to hop on the free cellphone banking bandwagon.
l Although banking might be free, cellphone service providers do charge for the cost of the SMS
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