Harare – Agriculture focused financial institution, Agribank says it has recorded a surge in the use of E-based transactions channels which rose by marginal 66 percent, representing a net value of about $ 12 million monthly for the six months ended June 30 2018.

Chief Executive Officer, Sam Malaba said the cumulative number of the Bank’s mobile subscribers is an estimated 200 000.

Malaba said the mobile banking usage has continued to rise steadily and this is mainly attributed to the cash shortages that the country is experiencing.

He said the Bank has proactively invested in more robust ancillary systems and infrastructure to ensure that it supports the growth from the self-service transactions.

Malaba said that the bank will continue to expand its e-channels and mobile banking platforms following the surge in business growth since 2017.

“There was a surge in e-channels transactions and an estimated $15 million transactions were processed for the half year ended June 30 2018, representing about 66 percent from the same period in the prior year,” he said.

“Currently the bank’s monthly transactional volumes average 615,000 on the mobile banking platform with average monthly values of about $12 million monthly,” he said.

“The bank has deployed 5,000 point of sale machines to merchants and agencies being driven by a strategy to invest in more point of sale terminals in order to provide convenience to customers and at the same grow the non- funded income.”

Going forward Malaba said the strategy is to invest in more POS terminals, provide convenience to customers and at the same time grow the non-funded income.

He said the stability of ICT systems is critical for survival of banks in the current environment.

“The Bank is implementing the Core Banking system upgrade as necessary for the Bank to expand ICT based e-channels in an increasingly competitive domestic and global banking environment.

“The Bank is migrating to the latest T24 version, Temenos R18, which uses modern Arrangement Architecture (AA) and will also implement new models,” he said adding that the total cost of the project is estimated at $6 million including taxes.

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