Nigeria: Sterling Bank Launches Mobile Money Solution, Electronic Library

Chijioke Nelson

STERLING Bank Plc has unveiled new mobile banking solution known as "One Bank", to facilitate new account openings, increase mobile money acceptance, use and adoption and deepen brand awareness and customer relationship.

The solution is also powered by a low-end customized mobile phone to be offered by the financial institution on request of the customer, while costs of the service projected to be less than N3000 will be spread over a period to enable easy acquisition.

Meanwhile, it also launched an electronic solution on a Tablet, which contained education materials- textbooks, for students of senior secondary schools in the country.

According to the bank, it was deliberate effort of the lender, which has cost it fortunes, to contribute in alleviating high costs of acquiring textbooks and the rising cases of failures of the students at the West Africa Examinations Council.

The bank's Executive Director, Finance and Strategy, Abubakar Suleiman, said the new product, which is the first of its kind in Nigerian Banking, is designed to improve mobile money use and adoption and smoothen customer relationship, while the education Tablets known as Personal Education Tablets for Secondary Schools (PETSS) come with full teaching aids and practical video demonstrations.

He pointed out that the One Bank application is an improvement in security of financial transactions, as it has two-level security authentication, which will be difficult for anybody to enter into if the phone is stolen or lost since the code generated by the bank for the purpose is known the owner.

"The application is expected to come with special security features in addition to the general existing security for banking applications. This will make it difficult for the phone to be used by any other person apart from the account holder," he said.

Suleiman reiterated that payment for the branded phones meant to drive the application, which will cost around N3,000 will be spread over a period of time to allow all varying socio-economic groups to benefit from it.

SOURCE:THE GUARDIAN.