Standard Bank says its mobile banking customers as at July 2013 have swelled to 3 million, representing a 58% increase from the same period last year.
On 15 August the group reported a 10% rise in headline earnings per share in the half-year to June period to 506 cents, and a dividend per share of 233 cents was declared.
“Sharply increased activity occurred through the mobile banking channels in South Africa offset by slightly lower activity through the group’s ATM network,” it said in its results presentation.
Vuyo Mpako, head of channel design and development at Standard Bank, said that at June 2013 the group had just under 170,000 unique registered users of its app, with the total value of transactions on the app at approximately R11 billion in the year to date.
Having launched its app in July 2011, First National Bank (FNB) announced last month that its banking app for smartphones had surpassed 520,000 active clients.
“We are elevating our investment on our smartphone banking app, our fully integrated Instant Money send money offerings, as well on our Automated Note Acceptor (ANA) machines. We are also upgrading our current network infrastructure to ensure that all points of representation are modern, fresh and appealing,” Mpako said.
Customer numbers
Standard Bank confirmed its total count of retail banking customers across Africa at 15.1 million. “We have about 11 million retail banking customers in South Africa,” it said.
Earlier in August Nedbank said that it had grown its client base to above 6.4 million, up 10% from 5.9 million since June 2012. The bank noted that clients using digital increased 80% cumulatively to 1.33 million.
Last month (30 July), Absa reported a 12% drop in banking customers in reporting interim results for the period June 2013, to 9.4 million.
Internet banking customers grew to 1.203 million, from 1.176 million in 2012, and from 150,000 in 2009, while mobile phone banking customers improved to 4.483 million, from 4.237 million before.
In delivering its results for the six months ending December 2012, FNB reported a 29% rise in online banking customers year-on-year, to 1.5 million.
The post South African mobile banking growth revealed appeared first on Payments Cards & Mobile.
