When FNB launched its banking app in July it was a South African first. Since then, the app has gone from strength to strength, processing increasing numbers of transactions over an increasing number of devices.
The South African banking giant announced that in the two months since its launch, the FNB Banking Application has been paired with close to 30 000 devices.
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FNB claims that the app now averages more than 500 downloads a day, although FNB expects this number to grow now that the app is available across the full range of BlackBerry devices.
Blackberry users do not incur a data charge when using the FNB App, due to an agreement between FNB and BlackBerry manufacturer, Research In Motion (RIM) where the data consumption used by the FNB App is included in the Blackberry Internet Subscription (BIS). FNB indicates that this will likely also result in increased uptake amongst BlackBerry users in the months to come.
Head of Products and Markets at FNB Connect, Farren Roper is pleased with the growth:
The number of downloads since launch has exceeded our expectations. We would like to think that this has been fuelled mostly by positive customer word of mouth. We have more than R160 million worth of transaction volumes already sent through the FNB App with close to 90 000 financial transactions processed to date. So our customers are not just downloading the App, they are using it.
“We believe that the current download and usage statistics are sustainable and expect growth over time, with increased smartphone and tablet penetration, additional device models being covered and more functionality being included in the FNB App,” Roper adds.
The app is most popular on Apple’s iOS platform with 58 percent of paired devices being iPhones.
Opening up the app to be available across all BlackBerry devices, has catapulted it into second position with 25 percent of paired devices, while Android devices sit in third places at sixteen percent.
Roper concludes:
The results are by no means indicative of handset models, but most likely a factor of having launched initially on touchscreen devices only. When you consider that we are gradually covering more devices, as well as the remaining operating System in the top four- Nokia Symbian, this is really a very solid download rate. With smartphone penetration increasingly on the rise, the FNB App is also well positioned to continue to give value to a growing pool of FNB customers, well into the future.
FNB is set to make an announcement regarding Symbian in the next few weeks.
