The Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) has introduced a new product (CBA Loop) that targets young urban professionals who want to bank on the go while on their smartphone or computer. The account can be opened from an app, Android at the moment, and on the web.
Kenyan banks have been increasingly creating digital products geared at getting customers who do not want to visit bank branches and CBA are taking the same route. CBA is not new to digital finance products as they partnered with Safaricom to launch M-Pesa and thereafter launched the mobile digital loan product, M-shwari.
Somewhere else you do not needing your debit card to get cash is the way of the future. Or was it Bitcoin ATMs that were the way of the future? Hmm. We forgot. Either way, the future is totally here and it's totally cardless. " Instead of the old fashioned insert-a-card-into-the-machine routine, customers can use the Wells Fargo app to generate an eight-digit code. That code, plus a customer's PIN number, will allow the withdraw of cash.
Security certainly was a big aspect of the cardless feature and the two-step identification helps reduce the risk of fraud. Thanks to Wells Fargo the San Francisco-based company is giving its account holders a way to access their money at 13,000 Wells Fargo ATMs across the U.S. without the use of a physical ATM card. When can this be deployed in Africa? I really cant wait for the same.
Earlier in 2016 when Banks were continually taking steps to enhance security, Wells Fargo just took a big leap forward by announcing that they will start using a new biometric technology called eyeprint authentication from tech startup. The technology creates a digital map of a person's eye through a smartphone camera by analyzing unique details such as blood vessels. A user then logs in by holding the camera up to his or her eye, and the software matches their eye to the stored blueprint.
This comes when a hacking group known as "Turkish Crime Family" is threatening to wipe the devices of millions of iPhone users unless Apple pays them a hefty ransom. The hackers say that they have access to hundreds of millions of email addresses of people who use @icloud and @me domains, and they even allegedly uploaded a video on YouTube that shows them breaking into some users' accounts.
In Kenya we recently have faced such cyber crimes targeting government institutions and private firms but with the current technology threats, no firm is immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new fintech revolution.
Users are not save either, but to protect against these type of attacks, I always recommend that users always use strong passwords, not use those same passwords across sites, and turn on two-factor authentication. It's a good idea to make sure that your passwords are always unique and random, and that you have a different password for every site or app. It can be a pain to manage all those different passwords, but it's also extremely important to keep your online identity safe.
Kenyan banks have been increasingly creating digital products geared at getting customers who do not want to visit bank branches and CBA are taking the same route. CBA is not new to digital finance products as they partnered with Safaricom to launch M-Pesa and thereafter launched the mobile digital loan product, M-shwari.
Somewhere else you do not needing your debit card to get cash is the way of the future. Or was it Bitcoin ATMs that were the way of the future? Hmm. We forgot. Either way, the future is totally here and it's totally cardless. " Instead of the old fashioned insert-a-card-into-the-machine routine, customers can use the Wells Fargo app to generate an eight-digit code. That code, plus a customer's PIN number, will allow the withdraw of cash.
Security certainly was a big aspect of the cardless feature and the two-step identification helps reduce the risk of fraud. Thanks to Wells Fargo the San Francisco-based company is giving its account holders a way to access their money at 13,000 Wells Fargo ATMs across the U.S. without the use of a physical ATM card. When can this be deployed in Africa? I really cant wait for the same.
Earlier in 2016 when Banks were continually taking steps to enhance security, Wells Fargo just took a big leap forward by announcing that they will start using a new biometric technology called eyeprint authentication from tech startup. The technology creates a digital map of a person's eye through a smartphone camera by analyzing unique details such as blood vessels. A user then logs in by holding the camera up to his or her eye, and the software matches their eye to the stored blueprint.
This comes when a hacking group known as "Turkish Crime Family" is threatening to wipe the devices of millions of iPhone users unless Apple pays them a hefty ransom. The hackers say that they have access to hundreds of millions of email addresses of people who use @icloud and @me domains, and they even allegedly uploaded a video on YouTube that shows them breaking into some users' accounts.
In Kenya we recently have faced such cyber crimes targeting government institutions and private firms but with the current technology threats, no firm is immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new fintech revolution.
Users are not save either, but to protect against these type of attacks, I always recommend that users always use strong passwords, not use those same passwords across sites, and turn on two-factor authentication. It's a good idea to make sure that your passwords are always unique and random, and that you have a different password for every site or app. It can be a pain to manage all those different passwords, but it's also extremely important to keep your online identity safe.
