“ I am very excited about wallet banking because it ’ s customer-centric , meeting a need that is felt in all our markets ”
— Vimal Kumar , Chief Executive : Retail & Business Banking , Customer Experience and Digital – Absa Regional Operations
mobile based remittance solution called Novo Fx . Again , this is something our customers are really in need of .”
Partnerships like these in a targeted way reach out to a huge untapped customer base . In 2016 , Absa was the first bank to offer South African customers reverse billing over all big four networks , allowing the MNOs to charge data costs back to Absa . “ I want our customers to never pay for data either while using the Absa app or website . Again , we are in very advances stage of discussions with an exciting technology company to aggregate the data customers use in accessing Absa on their mobile and charge it back to us .” This , he says , will push mobile access , data being an expensive commodity for Africans .
The investment Absa has put into data is now paying off . The bank won the 2019 award for Best Technology Initiative at the Financial Innovation Awards in London for its data analytics platform , which tackles the issue of data availability in banking , especially in emerging markets . “ Customer360 ( C360 ) presents data with a lot of visualisation and interactivity . There ’ s gamification and machine learning capability – again , it puts customers at the heart of our strategy . I truly believe we can become a customercentric organisation by driving personalised experiences through a combination of data and digital . And the employees are as much a part of the journey as the customers are . Digital transformation is only possible if we can get our colleagues on the same page ,” he concludes .
153 fintechmagazine . com