SCB Pakistan Launches Breeze - A Mobile App

Standard Chartered Bank, one of the leading private bank in Pakistan launches Breeze Mobile - A mobile app & Wap for mobile users. By this service SCB existing customers with Internet Banking account can access the account, perform fund transfer, buy mobile top up etc.
If you own an iphone than you can download it from App Store, for all phone users, they can access it by visiting to http://m.sc.com/pk.

By all means this is not a mobile banking, which other banks like Faysal Bank, MCB are offering in Pakistan.  In which your mobile banking account is separate from internet banking & it requires customer to call help line to activate it. But this is different, you just need to download the app & login with your internet banking account credentials.

There is not much information on how secure this mobile app is. I think we should leave it for time to decide. For now if you are SCB Pakistan internet banking user, you should definitely give it a try.

For more info: Breeze Mobile

Western Union, Absa to Offer Cross-Border Money Transfers via Internet and Mobile

First Money Transfer Service in World to Offer Seamless Platform Across Multiple Electronic Channels

South Africa's largest retail bank, Absa, and Western Union, a leader in global payment services, have enhanced their joint service offering to Absa accountholders by allowing them to conveniently access the Western Union(R) Money Transfer(SM)service to send or receive cross-border money transfers using either a cell phone or Internet banking.

Absa -- voted as Africa's most innovative bank -- and Western Union have developed a convenient solution for Absa accountholders wanting to transfer money to friends and family living abroad.

Brett King: Who gets it right with Internet Banking opportunities?

by: Brett King.Author, Bank 2.0,
      banking4tomorrow.com

Take a look at your retail or consumer banking website or homepage. I can 100% guarantee that regardless of who you are, and in what market you are in that I know exactly which part of the site is clicked on most. Contact us? Nope. Press Releases - definitely not. The biggest Ad banner on the homepage? Nope...

Figured it out. Well the headline gives it away. It is the login button. In developed economies click-thru rate from the bank homepage can be as high as 97% of traffic that visits the homepage, and in developing markets it still hovers around 70-75% generally.

The thing is that in most cases banks spend a considerable amount of money each year trying to entice new customers to apply online or to send in their details so someone in the mortgages team, call centre, preferred banking or private banking team can reach out to them. Acquisition must be a key metric of any direct channel team today. However, in most cases the visitors to your homepage are existing customers. Thus, 70-95% of daily traffic is being channelled immediately from the homepage to the secure internet banking website behind the login.

So let's get this straight. Your bank marketing team has just spent US$1m upgrading your site and putting offers all over 3rd party properties to direct traffic to your website and trigger acquisitions, but still 95% of visitors are clicking through to Internet Banking. How much product are you selling behind the login? Well, if you are most banks - virtually zero. Why? Because most managers see Internet Banking as a transaction platform designed to lower the cost of operations by transferring low-margin or costly transactions to a direct channel with a lower cost than a branch or call centre.