Two of SA’s big banks have committed themselves to developing mobile banking apps for Microsoft’s Windows Phone smartphone platform.
It’s important for platform developers to attract local banks to their operating systems given demand from South African consumers for transactional banking apps.
Nedbank says it is developing apps for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 and that these will be rolled out to customers early next year.
The bank launched its Nedbank App Suite to employees in June, with public roll-out starting in August. The app is available for Apple, Android and BlackBerry devices, as well as for feature phones.
Standard Bank, which launched its mobile banking application for BlackBerry, Android and Apple devices in June, announced the launch of its Windows 8 banking application at the South African launch of Windows 8 at the end of October. A spokesman confirms that Standard Bank is also working on a Windows Phone 8 app.
South Africa’s other two big retail banks, First National Bank and Absa, are taking a more cautious approach to Microsoft’s phone platform. Both intend to adopt a wait-and-see approach and will only develop Windows Phone apps if demand necessitates it.
FNB business operations head Farren Roper says the bank is “evaluating the Windows platform and ecosystem”. He says that rather than being first to market with an app for each platform, FNB prefers to cater “for existing demand”.
“If demand is there and our clients request it, then this will influence our development timeline,” he says. “At the moment, it is too premature to assess take up.”
Absa, which has said it will launch its app to staff this month and to consumers early next year, intends to offer apps for Android and iOS at launch. Although it says it will expand the offering to other platforms at a later stage, it hasn’t specified which platforms it will be extended to, or when.
It has, however, said that it has no plans to develop a Windows Phone version of the app, at least not for the moment, because there are insufficient users of the platform to justify the expense. — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media
