July 27, 2009

It wasn't long ago that mobile banking was barely known by account holders in South Africa. It was only in 2001 that certain of the large South African banks launched a version of mobile banking. These services attracted little interest from account holders with most of the initiatives failing. As late as the beginning of 2005, the future viability of mobile banking was uncertain and disputed.

Neither the local nor the international banks were actively developing mobile services.Now, in 2009, the picture is completely different. Mobile banking has become the largest electronic channel for two of the largest South Africa banks. Both ABSA and FNB have reported customer bases of over a million customers each. Mobile services have expanded from account queries to payments for virtual goods.