At least one major South African bank appears to have changed its tune on financial management app 22Seven.
First National bank (FNB) has issued a press release claiming that it will “allow access to 22Seven”.
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The bank claims that it made the decision as part of an “ongoing attempt to create simple and convenient solutions for its customers”.
“FNB has set a precedence of responding to our customer’s [sic] needs with innovative products and services. We are now providing a secure means to engage with 22Seven in response to our customers’ need to learn more about their financial behavior,” says Lee-Anne van Zyl, CEO Online Banking at FNB.
FNB’s online banking customers will be able to access 22Seven using the secondary user function on their online banking profile.
“FNB customers who are signed up to the 22Seven service should set-up a secondary user, select the accounts they wish to share and use a different username and password. If correctly set up to allow ‘view access’ only, this will limit the exposure of client information to transaction history, balances and account numbers,” says van Zyl.
FNB is the first of South Africa’s major banks to come out openly and offer support for 22Seven.
A number of banks, including ABSA, Capitec, and FNB itself had previously issued warnings advising users against supplying their details to third parties in the wake of the 22Seven launch.
Van Zyl cautions, however, that it remains “the responsibility of the client to ensure that their secondary user is set up to ‘view access’ only”.
22Seven founder Christo Davel lauded FNB for choosing to add support, however limited, for the app:
“It’s fantastic to collaborate with FNB to give our joint customers a view on their financial behaviour that they have never had before. It’s not surprising to me that FNB is the first South African bank to support the 22seven model as they have a history of innovation and supporting entrepreneurship,” he said.
