Now while I tend not affiliate myself with a specific brand, except when it comes to Audi, Apple, Nokia, Google, Firefox, … , okay okay, so maybe I do tend to be a bit brand affiliated, but I promise, it’s only when I believe that the brand deserves mention do I do so!

I’ve been asked a few times by a very diverse collection of people: young, old, entrepreneurs, employees, savers and spenders which bank do I recommend.

My answer has always been roughly the same, “It depends on what you need!”. You see, banks sell a large variety of products, each with its own value proposition. They have bundles, stand-alone services, value added services, etc, etc. The trick is to find the product set that fits your requirement, so check them all out and do all the comparisons yourself.

Personally, I have been with ABSA since the beginning of time. In fact, I just realised that I’ve been with ABSA since before they were even ABSA! I was a United Bank client way back in the day and when ABSA was formed, I just got switched over! Now while I haven’t had awesome service, I can’t seem to think of a single incident when I thought that I was ever getting bad service from them. They have been pretty stable with satisfactory service, which admittedly, should be good enough for anyone!

ABSA’s slogan is “Today, tomorrow, together.” The key word in their slogan, to me, is the bit about tomorrow. Somehow they manage to keep ahead of the rest with technology and have been pretty darn good at making technological products easy for the man in the street. I’m a great big fan of Internet banking, purely because of the convenience. The fact that banks close at 3pm on weekdays and 11am on weekends is just plain annoying and then somehow I always managed to end up in a queue behind old people, stupid people, loud people or just plain annoying people whenever I find the rare need to actually go into the bank!

ABSA has recently hit a milestone that is a pretty big achievement. They have acquired 1 million cellphone banking customers. With an average sign-up rate of 5000 per month, it puts the product at the forefront amongst the other banks in SA. Considering that we live in a mobile saturated market its not surprising at the okes at ABSA are confident that its mobile banking offering will become the biggest touch point between the business and it’s clients. So much so, that Christo Vrey, Managing Executive of ABSA Digital Channels has come out saying that it’s cellphone banking service will overtake that of its Internet banking service!

With 1.7million logins per month, I’m damn sure that the service is brilliant and safe. After all, 1 million users can vouch for it!

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