Skip to main content

PRESS RELEASE: Prepaid Electricity Purchases Using Cellphones Growing

Purchasing prepaid electricity via FNB's (First National Bank) cellular telephone banking services is growing in popularity as customers begin to see the benefit of using the bank's self-service channels for their transactions. FNB Namibia has advised that 82% of all prepaid electricity purchases processed by the bank are made via cellular telephone.

Long gone are the days of having to travel to a retail store to top-up your electricity meter when the lights go off," says Desery van Wyk, head of cellphone banking at FNB Namibia. "Instead customers can recharge instantly using their phones," she says. Prepaid electricity purchases have seen year-on-year growth of about 174% in both transaction volume and value. “FNB Namibia launched this facility in February 2012 and since then it has gone from strength to strength."
 


(Photograph: Desery van Wyk, Head: Cellphone Banking, First National Bank, Namibia)

Over the years banks have introduced various ways to bring banking services to customers, including mobile banking, which allows customers to bank whenever and wherever they want. "Cellphone banking is a popular and convenient channel for most Namibians who may not have easy access to traditional forms of banking like branches or ATMs," says van Wyk.

In South Africa, for example, according to the World Wide Worx 2012 Mobility Report, cellphone banking is the third most popular method of banking after ATMs and branch visits. In Namibia the situation is similar. FNB Namibia encourages customers to make as much use of self-service channels as possible as this is cheaper, quicker, more convenient and accessible to many more.

For more information please contact Vicky Muranda, Manager: Corporate Communications at FNB Holdings on telephone: (+264 61) 299 2944.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

PRESS RELEASE: Insight Namibia Magazine Celebrates 100th Edition (September 2013)

In a magazine market known for its fly-by-nights and flash-in-the-pans, Insight Namibia cc marks its 100th monthly edition with the September 2013 issue . The first edition appeared in September 2004 and throughout the last nine years, Insight maintained its position as Namibia's premier current affairs magazine . Originally started and currently based in Windhoek, Namibia, the magazine's founders, Robin Sherbourne, David Lush and Tangeni Amupadhi,  journalists in their own right, at the time (2004) wrote that Insight was 'born out of a feeling that Namibians yearn for more than just hard news.' Readers were promised a publication that went beyond the daily headlines and covered 'the story behind the story' . The magazine was not started with a bank loan; the pioneers pooled their savings to get it off the ground and to this day, that same financial discipline, has ensured that Insight has never taken a loan to cover its operating, printing and overhead cos...

Tattoo: Ethiopian Coptic Cross (Meskel) Design

     C hristianity arrived on the shores of southern Africa approximately 600 years ago, and unbeknownst to the bright-eyed European missionaries who disembarked from sodden ships at the Cape of Good Hope, it had been practiced on the African continent, and flourished as an independent religion for almost 1,000 years before, in Ethiopia. Today, the oldest Christian faith on the continent, rumoured to be closest in resembling early Christianity, is the Ethiopian Coptic Church (or the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church).      The cross is the popular universal symbol of Christianity and across the world, in every Christian community, it remains within the parameters of a simple design (+) , almost 2,000 years old. The Ethiopian Coptic Church is the only known Christian community that produces a remarkable version of the cross, called ''meskel''; even more remarkable, this development occurred independent of the influence of European Christianity. Meskel pat...

Press Release: GET RID OF DEBT (FNB)

“The Bank of Namibia (BoN) has announced an increase in the repo rate by 0,25% to 5,75% on the back of an upward trend in inflation. “ As a result of increasing interest rates debt is becoming more expensive,” says Daniel Motinga , Head: Research at First National Bank of Namibia. “While the difference may be small at the moment, any additional interest rate increases will start to really hurt people’s pockets. Now is the perfect time to rebalance your debt portfolio by paying extra into your loans.”  (Photo: Daniel Motinga, FNB) Motinga went on to say that for the last five years interest rates had been at an all-time low, meaning that the cost of debt has been reasonably low for this period of time. “But, the interest rate rose by 0.25 percent, and we have now entered an upward rate cycle, which means we could see more interest rate hikes in the future. Borrowers can take steps to protect themselves from rate hikes.” “As interest rates rise, so does the cost of borro...