First National Bank’s (FNB) CEO Michael Jordaan has announced his resignation on Twitter.

Jordaan’s tweet reads:

After 10 years at the helm of FNB I will step down at the end of 2013. Thanks for all your support.

— Michael Jordaan (@MichaelJordaan) May 22, 2013

Over the last few years, Jordaan has been at the helm of FNB’s digital marketing strategy that uses technology to differentiate it from other SA banks to make a smarter, easier and more efficient banking experience for customers.

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South Africa already has a number of great money transfer solutions. The real challenge is not getting another banking app, but rather finding locations for these applications to convert credit into cash as well as cash into credit, says Bevan Ducasse of wiGroup.

“Mobile money is growing tremendously,” says Ducasse. “Every one of the big four banks as well as Capitec has a mobile banking solution, and we have MTN and Vodacom offering money transfer services as well. The problem of how to enable people without traditional bank accounts to transfer money has been solved. If someone has a cellphone number, you can send them money.”

What does still need to be solved, says Ducasse, is the problem of how to spend money sitting in mobile accounts and wallets. “At some point you still need to be able to deposit and withdraw cash,” he says; “and everything points to the retail footprint in South Africa being the answer.”

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The SpaceStation, the digital media sales agency who represents GoMetro (read the review) announced that since its launch in October 2012, the platform has grown to just over 528 000 unique browsers in March 2013.

Data from the last 6 months also show that 43% of users spend more than 3 minutes on the service per session, showing great potential for engagement.

The Space Station CEO Gustav Goosen says that “We are all aware of the phenomenal growth of mobile internet access in South Africa. With this in mind we are particularly proud of GoMetro and the success they have had in providing a real service to commuters. These commuters made 1 561 811 queries for real time updates with a staggering 635 221 of those queries made in March alone.”

The platform is designed to provide Metrorail commuters with real-time information including train timetables, line announcements, updates and other key services.

GoMetro was carefully developed to work efficiently on any device with the sole prerequisite that the phone has an Internet connection. That being said an interesting trend has developed over the last 6 months. Over 80% of the users accessed GoMetro on Blackberrys while only 8% used Android, 6% Nokia, 1,5% Apple and the remaining used a Windows Phone.

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While 3D graphics in video games continues to advance, looking more realistic over time, the one element it seems that has not quite been perfected is that of water, with it not looking much like the real thing.

Well, that is all about to change with the development of a new fluid simulation algorithm called “Position Based Fluids” (PBD).

NVIDIA’s Miles Macklin and Matthias Müller-Fischer explain ”In fluid simulation, enforcing incompressibility is crucial for realism; it is also computationally expensive. (…) By formulating and solving a set of positional constraints that enforce constant density, our method allows similar incompressibility and convergence to modern smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) solvers, but inherits the stability of the geometric, position based dynamics method, allowing large time steps suitable for real-time applications.”

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FNB has released a new Banking App customised for tablet devices, complimenting a much larger tablet device strategy for the Bank. From today, the App is available for download from today in app stores across Apple, Android and Windows 8 devices.

“The new Banking App, designed specifically for tablet devices, was developed with ease-of-use as a key priority and utilises the full capability of the latest tablet devices. It is completely custom-made and not a re-skin of our existing smartphone App.” says Farren Roper, Head of FNB Connect ISP and Business Operations.

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It’s been a long wait for their customers but Absa has finally launched their mobile banking application. They’ve taken some criticism for taking so long and have left many people wondering if it’s too little too late and why it took so long in the first place.

Yesterday I attended a customer launch event for the Absa app. I was able to chat to a few people at Absa who are behind the app as well as their mobile and digital strategy. They answered some really tough questions from me and provided some insight and shared their vision going forward. Based on what I know and have experienced, I’m going to share my thoughts as an Absa client as well as someone who has a keen interest in the intersection of banking and technology.

Why did Absa make us wait so long? (more…)

First launched to market in September 2012, Nedbank’s fully automated online home loan channel has enabled more than 3 000 clients to apply for finance for their homes online in a secure environment, in its first six months. The Nedbank online home loan channel forms part of the bank’s strategy to lead in digital banking.

This innovative application process has had an average turnaround time of less than four hours for credit approvals granted to homebuyers and seven  out of 10 clients that apply online get a credit approval during this time.

“These are excellent results and, more importantly, we are delighted that this innovative online channel has become an incredible value-add for existing and new homebuyers. In today’s ever changing world, where clients are spoiled for choice, convenience, ease of access and security are vital. It is, therefore, important that banks continue to innovate to differentiate their offerings,” said Timothy Akinnusi, Head of Sales and Client Management, Nedbank Home Loans Management.

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Last week Monday, FNB opened the doors of its first dotFNB store in Cape Town at Cavendish Square shopping mall in Claremont.

Bandwidth Blog attended the official opening and received a tour from Kim Gibson-van der Walt, Head of dotFNB, FNB Banking Channels. Kim revealed that the dotFNB stores are considered “the future of banking and entrench FNB’s dominance of digital banking channels” where naturally, technology is a huge focus.

The dotFNB store is a space in which to both migrate and educate clients, something that is extremely important to the direction in which the bank is taking. Customers are assisted by staff that are technically trained to operate the online services on all the available devices in store as well as offer sound banking advise.

The store primarily addresses people who bank online and no longer want or need to visit physical branches but want to know more about the latest available online banking options and continue to receive advice.

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