Nedbank launches app suite, only available to staff for now

South African banking giant Nedbank today launched a smart and feature phone app suite to its staff.

Speaking at the Nedbank Leadership Summit the group’s CEO Mike Brown announced that a beta version of the app suite would be available to the company’s employees:

I am really excited about Nedbank’s digital journey….we have built a foundation that enables unrivalled security and on-going app releases to meet customer needs for anywhere anytime banking. Can’t wait to get going myself!

The announcement was shared on Nedbank’s Facebook Timeline:

“The Nedbank App Suite is unique in that it will be available on smartphones as well as a wide range of feature phones. It is our intention to provide an easy to use banking app that is safe, convenient and available to as many South Africans as possible,” said Brown.

When the app suite goes public, Nedbank claims it will include “a first to market online share trading offering, Corporate batch authorizations and Business Banking password reset capability”. It will also reportedly come with mobile banking, balance enquiry, payments, transfers, branch locators, forex calculators, and application lead form apps.

“The launch of the Nedbank App Suite follows the recent launch of Approve-itTM, which is the best online security currently available in South Africa. Our priority is to make our clients’ digital experience with Nedbank secure and to empower them to do all their transactional banking anywhere, anytime,” Brown added.

Brown claims that in addition to the app suite, the bank has “built an architecture that enables quick product development and release and have a number of innovative products in the pipeline and I look forward to announcing the details in the coming weeks”.

The app suite will reportedly launch to the general public on 1 August. Nedbank group CIO Fred Swanepoel will reportedly be available on Twitter to answer any questions:

Questions about the Nedbank App Suite Beta? Fred Swanepoel – Nedbank Group CIO will be on Twitter at 2pm to answer them. #NedbankAppSuite

— Nedbank (@Nedbank) June 25, 2012

Update: The app will be available for iPad and BlackBerry, Android and iOS smartphones as well as the top 20 feature phones.