While many South African banking consumers are taking advantage of the ease and convenience of Internet Banking to meet their basic banking requirements, most have yet to fully harness the potential of their online banking facilities. According to a new survey, there is a clear distinction between banks when it comes to innovative use of Internet Banking, and customers are more aware of these differences than ever.

This is according to the results of recent research conducted with 1353 Internet banking users by online market research specialist, Columinate, aimed at assessing the Internet banking habits and behaviours of users of this banking medium as well as the overall levels of satisfaction of Internet banking customers with the online offerings of their banks. This survey is the first in Columinate’s ‘SITEisfaction’ series, aimed at measuring website satisfaction across different industries. SITEisfaction will benchmark website satisfaction and provide annual insights to companies in these industries. (more…)

As 2011 draws to a close we thought it might be a good time to look back and see what products we really enjoyed using in 2011. Some of our choices might be controversial, but hey, horses for courses. Let us know what you think in the comments?

Best Phone: Samsung Galaxy S2

Even the most ardent fans of iPhone have to agree – the Galaxy S2 is a truly great phone. It is very fast, is built well (despite being made of plastic), the screen is beautiful, the camera is excellent – the list goes on. Pricing is also pretty good, and the phone is still great several months later, which you cannot typically say of the Android phone marketplace. You cannot go wrong. Not even Samsung’s bigger and faster Galaxy Note could change our name. Now we just have to get our hands on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Close second: Apple iPhone 4S. Expect our review in the new year.

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Despite increasing pressure on the BlackBerry brand and worldwide sales decreases, the BlackBerry brand is stronger than ever in Africa. BIS is still a very compelling deal in SA with its high data prices. But Blackberry’s App World still has very few apps, which was one of our primary criticisms against our recent review of the otherwise brilliant BlackBerry Bold 9900.

South African developers are also slow to adopt BlackBerry, as the choice of apps might suggest. But still we think it is necessary to focus on some the good Made in SA BlackBerry apps, scarce as they might be. Here is our favourite South African developed BlackBerry apps.

1) News24

There are only a few app developers in SA who cater for multiple mobile app platforms, and News24 is one of them. While the app is by no means as sexy as the iPhone and Android versions, it is functional and stable. Using a similiar structure to the other News24 apps, the app also focusses more on weather with a quick 3 days summary of upcoming weather. Users can also check Lotto results, but cannot seem to see comments, just like with the iPhone and Android. As many would agree, it is sometimes more interesting to see people’s comments on article than the article itself. Maybe we can see this in future.

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The iPhone is not exactly a niche product anymore, and especially not in SA. While not close to the popularity of Blackberry, SA developers are not ignoring iPhone. There is clearly a market to develop for South African iPhone users, and there has been a lot of apps released in recent times. We thought it might be time to list our favourite “Made in South Africa / for South Africans” apps. It should be pointed out that many of these apps are available on other smartphone platforms as well.

News 24: Yeah, we are not starting off with the little guy. News24′s app has been out almost ever since the first iPhones appeared on our shores, and the app has had quite a few updates. While sometimes buggy, it is still one of the first apps to recommend to someone fresh to iPhone. It is versatile as well – you do not have to only read news – it can be customized to have your favorite sections of the 24.com empire right within one touch. For example – I like having Fin24 and Wheels24 links on the bottom of my News24 install. (more…)

Guest Post: Kobus Elhers is a lecturer in Informatics specialising in Decision Making. He’s passionate about good design and spends his time looking at how technology impacts society. Of course he also has a slight gadget addiction.

Technologically FNB really has no equal in the South African banking space. They have an excellent internet banking platform (integrated with share trading and investment platforms), they offer several innovative mainstream products like card-less withdrawals and cellphone transfers, their use of Twitter is unparalleled (check out @RBJacobs), they have (mostly) figured out how OTP’s should work, they provide the only PayPal service in SA and they even operate as a VASP providing ADSL and VOIP services through FNBConnect. The list continues…

A few years ago FNB launched their first App (FNBConnect) to allow users to locate ATM’s and utilise some of the other VASP functionality. This week, however, saw the launch of the first integrated mobile banking application in SA. The FNB App was launched for Android, Blackberry and iPhone platforms. The app has generally been well received and generated a large amount of internet buzz. For those of you who are not FNB customers, do not have a compatible phone or haven’t installed the app yet, I’ll provide a quick review of the iPhone application here.

Functionality
In essence the app provides a more convenient and elegant version of all the commonly used functionality provided by the online banking system. (more…)

Yesterday we broke the news that 102 million Sony users around the world have had their credit card details, personal information and more compromised in what is being called the biggest hack in history. Today banks around the world have started taking proactive action to prevent any credit card fraud and governments are starting to take action.

One of South Africa’s largest banks FNB made an announcement that they would be monitoring any credit cards that have been used on the Sony network in the last 12 months and reverse any suspect transactions, a number of their clients also been reporting that they were being told to cancel their credit cards. (Ed: You can see their Facebook communication here)

In Australia this hack is being called  the biggest security breach in their history as at least 700 000 people have been affected. Law enforcement agencies and Banks are working closely together and credit card transactions are being closely monitored for fraudulent activity.

In Great Britain 3 million people have been affected and accounts are being closely monitored. If any fraudulent activity is picked up customers are being issued new credit cards.

In Canada 1 million affected users are planning a $1 billion class action law suit against Sony for the security breach. This is being seen as just the tip of the iceberg as millions of users around the world were affected in this security breach.

U.S. House of Representatives, the government of the city of Taipei, Taiwan,  the British, Canadian privacy authorities and the Australian government have now started taking serious note of this attack.

It took Sony a whole week to inform the public about this security breach and to date Sony still does not know the true extent of the hack. Sony has recruited outside security firms to help with the investigation. This is bound to get worse for Sony before it gets better in the next few weeks.

Back in July we reported on the Paypal X / FNB competition to develop local adaptation of innovative paypal applications, and here are the results! Two up-and-coming star developers have created Billbox, a brand new application using PayPal’s payment platform that offers proof of their formidable skills. Now the pair of Neil Koekemoer and Werner Janse van Rensburg have been rewarded for their excellence, and declared winners of the PayPal X / FNB Developer Challenge – the award for the most innovative platform using PayPal.

Billbox is an extremely useful application for anyone who has ever lived in a situation where they’ve needed to split expenses with others – it monitors receipts and payments for those who share bills. Not only does it keep track of shared expenses, it also requests payment from group members.

Koekemoer explains how Billbox will be used: “Our App is designed for people who share expenses such as students, housemates or holiday and business travel groups. Individuals can also use the application to track their own spending habits,” he says.

His co-creator Janse van Rensburg adds, “Having shared bills with housemates for several years, we knew there was a need for a product like Billbox ― and we were our own best customers.”

The competition and award is part of FNB’s on-going commitment to driving innovation in the financial services sector. The PayPal X Developer Challenge highlights the demand for payment enabled platforms and rewards innovative uses of PayPal’s payments tools.

Interestingly, the pair, who are about to be flown by FNB to attend the PayPal X Innovate 2010 Conference in San Francisco as a result of their victory, only found out about the competition at the last minute. They heard FNB CEO Michael Jordaan and PayPal’s Regional Director of Israel and South Africa Oded Zehavi make an announcement about it at the Silicone Cape event in Cape Town.

“Three hundred and fifty seven hours later Billbox was born, just in time for the closing date of the PayPal X / FNB Developer Challenge,” said Koekemoer.

It’s been a big week for the South African internet economy. First MWEB started a broadband price war with their uncapped ADSL offering and now Pay Pal and FNB have announced that they’ve entered into an agreement to bring Pay Pal to South Africa. This enables South Africans to sell to PayPal’s global customer base of more than 81 million active accounts in 190 markets around the world and move the proceeds to their FNB accounts. (South Africa is the 190th country to get paypal accounts!)

This drastically lowers the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs to setup online stores and instantly start selling online. Bad news for online merchant providers like MyGate, VCS and even MWEB’s Safeshop.

Michael Jordaan, FNB’s Chief Executive Officer had this to say -

“We are especially pleased to make this announcement on the eve of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, as South Africans will be able to join the global eCommerce marketplace. Our agreement with PayPal also enables international businesses and individuals to transact with South African service providers via a secure and convenient payment gateway”

Pay Pal concluded -

“FNB and PayPal have a similar focus on innovation, so it makes sense that we would work with FNB to make online payments even easier for merchants and consumers in South Africa,” said Oded Zehavi, head of PayPal’s business in Israel and South Africa.

FNB Customers can simply open a PayPal account and link it to a qualified FNB account and receive PayPal payments in 21 different currencies. FNB will convert the currency to South African Rand, when the money is transferred into their accounts.

Twitter is buzzing with the news.