Companies

Stanchart upgrades mobile platform to grow clients

standard chartered

Standard Chartered Bank Kenya's head office at Chiromo Road, Nairobi. The bank has upgraded its electronic commerce platform, in a move to make its applications easy to use and to grow the number of mobile commerce clients. File

Standard Chartered Bank Kenya has upgraded its electronic commerce platform, in a move to make its applications easy to use and to grow the number of mobile commerce clients.

The upgrade has been done by a software firm Cellulant, which has deployed a new mobile commerce platform dubbed Release 3.0 that offers merchant services, digital services, bulk payments and agency banking via applications on Google's Android, iOS (Apple) and other channels' access such as USSD, SMS and Java applications.

Previously, the platform was accessed via USSD which its clients found cumbersome to use.

USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) is a Global System for Mobile(GSM) communication technology that is used to send text between a mobile phone and an application program in the network. Applications may include prepaid roaming or mobile chatting.

Unlike SMS, USSD transactions occur during the session only. With SMS, message scan be sent to a mobile phone and stored for several days if the phone is not activated or within range.

Standard Chartered Kenya’s Consumer Banking director, Kariuki Ngari, says that the investment has already seen them double the active base of M-banking users over the second quarter winning the Bank an award within its global network.

“The Bank’s aim is to more than triple mobile commerce usage as an alternative delivery channel for our range of services as part of our strategic commitment to meet our discerning customers’ needs more conveniently,” said Mr Ngari.

He added that the bank is eager to see its customers adopt the new platform as it plans to roll out new services on its alternative channels.

Cellulant is a leading mobile banking provider that serves more than 32 banks in Africa and which over 10 billion were transacted across its platform last year.

The software firm has been powering mobile banking for Standard Chartered Bank for about three years across five countries in Africa (Ghana, Zambia, Botswana, Nigeria and Kenya) and is looking to rolling this across all Standard Chartered bank markets in Africa This will enable the bank's customers across the continent to enjoy mobile banking, merchant payments, web payments, digital content and agency banking on their phones.

Standard Chartered Bank’s decision to upgrade to Cellulant’s new mobile commerce platform, is also based on the platform robustness which allows the bank to tailor make different products for various markets across Africa.

This new software iteration is a highly robust technical platform that integrates to different core banking systems, with security features on encryption, monitoring and channel management business tools.

The platform also aggregates banks' channels such as ATM and internet banking to enhance customer’s user experience and enable services such as cardless withdrawals, secure PIN management, SMS alerts on mobile for ATM, bill presentment and payment.

Cellulant’s Chief Business Officer, Mr Paul Ndichu, said the firm invests 15 per cent of its annual revenues from all its markets in Research and Development to drive product enhancement and new mobile commerce platforms that enables value chains.