Etisalat Nigeria wants to transform the country’s banking sector with its new smartphone mobile banking app that will enable customers to access their mobile money services faster and with more ease.
With over 15 million downloads to date, the free app will be used for customers of GTBank, Zenith Bank, Stanbic Bank, First Bank Nigeria, as well as Paga Payment Network to simply access their banking services through their mobile phones. The new app is available for Android, Apple iOS, Windows Mobile and Java and in English, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba languages.
In a statement, Khalifa Al Forah, Etisalat Group’s chief digital services officer said: “Etisalat is at the forefront of technology innovation, bringing market relevant and transformational services to its customers across the group markets. Nigeria currently has a smartphone penetration of over 10% and it expected to reach 40% in the next two years. By enabling people to use their mobile phones to access advanced banking services, we not only hope to deliver lasting benefits to our customers , but also contribute to the socio-economic development of the economies of Nigeria and other countries that we operate in.”
Etisalat’s Mobile Wallet service dubbed “Flous” includes mobile payments (merchants, utility, transportation), money transfers (domestic and International), bank accounts/payment cards management, secure access, ticketing, as well as merchant payment acceptance service “Mobile Cashier”.
Working with other partners such as NIBSS, banks and MasterCard among others, Etisalat wants to enable its customers to pay bills, do merchant transactions and merchant trading solutions.
According to Matthew Willsher, CEO Etisalat Nigeria research has shown that m-banking and m-payments can help lower the transaction costs of money transfer, increase the flow of money by making it easier to send smaller amounts as well as introduce efficient tool for secure financial management.
“We believe the benefits to our customers will be immense and that this has the potential to transform the way we handle and manage money in this country. The mobile phone has already improved African life in so many ways – it’s exciting to think it now has the potential to replace notes and coins and give all of our customers’ access to world-class banking services,” Willsher, concluded.