BUUMBA CHIMBULU writes from Livingstone
@SunZambian
CELLULANT, a company providing digital commerce platform in Africa, has challenged financial players to adopt the latest technological systems such as WhatsApp banking to broaden their services.
According to Cellulant country manager, Gilbert Lungu, two local commercial banks had so far adopted the WhatsApp banking which has been around Zambia for three weeks now.
Mr Lungu said the system had therefore transformed the banking experience for the two commercial banks.
He was speaking in an interview on the side-line of the fifth annual conference of the Insures Association of Zambia (IAZ).
“WhatsApp has added a leg where there is artificial intelligence for security. And so far for the time it has been working its working perfectly well
“This is live as we speak, from the banking point of view it has been around in Zambia for the past three weeks and two banks so far have started using it and some have announced and others have not but it is there and working,” Mr Lungu said.
Mr Lungu also said like other financial players, the insurance sector could improve on efficiency and reduce operational costs if it adopted the WhatsApp banking platform.
With this platform, Mr Lungu said, the Insurance Sector could improve liquidity as customers would be able to pay premiums in real time as it was also connected to some bank accounts and mobile wallet.
“Our consistent message to the insurance sector is that the same can be done for them; we can bring that technology in insurance because it works anywhere, and it is customized,” he said.
“We can get insurance customers to interact with their customers via USSD code that we can create or put them on a shared code where we can name them and things such as premium payments customers can make from there getting from their mobile banking,” Mr Lungu said.
