• FNB has launched a Secure Call feature on the FNB app.
• Secure Call is VOIP call feature but FNB has said that calls are zero-rated on all of the major networks.
• FNB says it is working to improve the security of its outbound communications as well.

With cybercrime constantly on the rise, South Africans are just as much at risk of being attacked as other citizens around the world. Phishing attacks and malware can happen at any time and the techniques employed by criminals may go unnoticed by the average person.

This means that an attacker could be listening in to your conversations, reading your text messages and watching you access your online banking, all without your knowledge.

In a bid to offer its customers a bit more security, FNB has rolled out Secure Call on the FNB App.

The feature makes use of VOIP and as such, FNB has zero-rated the feature on all major networks to ensure customers don’t have to use their own data. The bank says that Secure Call is a response to the threat that is vishing or voice phishing.

“Secure customer interactions are integral to our strategy to build a trusted digital platform. Our aim is to give our customers the comfort of knowing that they’re communicating with the right institution without the vulnerability that is often associated with off-platform communication channels. We started this journey with our Secure Chat feature, which has been hugely popular with our customers. However, we recognise that some customers prefer to talk to a person. Therefore, it’s crucial for us to enable this interaction at no cost to the customer through a channel that requires proper customer authentication,” chief executive officer at FNB, Jacques Celliers (pictured above) said in a press release.

This is great but, as Celliers points out, the bank has work to do as regards outbound communication.

While customers having a secure connection to the bank is a good start, cybercriminals can still contact customers and claim to be the bank. How FNB plans to address this remains to be seen, in the interim however, we advise that if somebody calls you claiming to be from FNB, or any bank for that matter, hang up the call and contact the bank directly.

“As part of our ongoing efforts to improve two-way communication with customers, we also aim to deliver a better experience in outbound communication in future to provide our customers with even more protection against risks such as phishing and vishing. We’ve made significant progress over the years in enabling customers to perform a wide range of tasks on our platform, such as approving online shopping payments, viewing activity notifications, and cancelling a card and ordering a new one using our App,” said Celliers.

In October 2022, FNB announced it was reimagining its business with a particular focus on digital solutions within its app. This new direction includes Instant Payments in the form of PayShap, features such as ChatPay, and virtual cards all of which improve the customer experience.

Make no mistake however, FNB has had to work long and hard to make this a reality but it’s good to see those efforts paying off in the form of better protections for customers.