Alternatives to traditional banking are experiencing a surge in popularity of late. While there are still legislative pitfalls that need to be addressed which slow that surge down, South Africans appear to be embracing mobile money solutions.
Case in point is FNB’s eWallet solution which allows FNB customers to send money to anybody with a cellphone number. Recipients can then withdraw this money whenever they please. While an eWallet is not a bank account, it gives folks without access to traditional banking a way to store their money securely and withdraw it when needed.
The solution has been incredibly useful and successful. So much so that FNB has now reported that it saw transactions involving the eWallet solution increase by 12 percent in 2021.
FNB reports that throughout 2021, 56 billion transactions were made and some R31 billion was recording in transactions. Early in 2021, FNB reported that it was processing four million transactions a month with the value of those transactions averaging R2.4 billion.
“The popularity of eWallet indicates that our efforts to provide more South Africans with convenient and cost-effective financial services solutions are gaining traction. More importantly, we’ve increased the value of eWallet by offering qualifying individual customers free eWallet sends, and recipients continue to receive their funds in full at no cost,” chief executive of FNB Retail, Raj Makanjee, said in a statement.
FNB eWallet allows for folks to receive money at an FNB ATM or select Spar stores throughout South Africa and while convenient it lacks certain features that may be valuable to folks, even if they don’t have a bank account. As such, FNB introduced Easy Zero, a bank account for those who have irregular income. While the account has drawn in one million customers it’s clear that mobile money solutions that don’t require a bank account are more popular.
The ongoing success of eWallet stands in stark contrast to the shuttering of Vodacom’s M-Pesa product in 2016 which the network operator said had failed to achieve critical mass. More so, MTN’s Momo solution is also proving popular. Perhaps Vodacom should have given M-Pesa more time.
