Bank Zero to launch phone tap payments

Bank Zero chairman Michael Jordaan recently revealed that phone tap payments and other new features will be added to the bank’s services in the next six months.

Jordaan recently announced on social media that Bank Zero is working on developing the following features:

• Pay Many, which could be used for salary payments 
• Immediate Payments, which would work similar to PayShap but without restrictions
• Phone Tap Payments

Jordaan told Daily Investor that these three new features will be made available in the first half of 2024.

These three features were chosen because they were “top of the list of requests from Bank Zero customers”.

“We are in constant communication with our customer base and prioritise what they say they want from us,” he said.

While Bank Zero will continually release new features, Jordaan said it does not intend to become a full-service, traditional bank.

“We do not want to operate branches as we prefer online, digital processes wherever possible,” he said. 

“These are more efficient and less costly than running a full-service bank. We aim to be the best transactional bank for businesses and individuals.”

“This means we will continually release powerful new features while making transactional banking as affordable as possible.”

He explained that the bank envisages an ecosystem where it partners with other “best-of-breed players” to offer more comprehensive services such as loans and investments. 

As an example, he used the bank’s recent partnership with card machine provider iKhokha.

Jordaan said that, in pricing reviews, the Bank Zero account is often compared to the entry-level accounts of other banks that have very limited functionality. 

However, Bank Zero offers advanced business banking features at the same low or zero price as it applies to individual customers. 

“The savings potential is great: hundreds of rands of fee savings per month for individuals and thousands of rands per month for businesses,” he said.

Jordaan added that Bank Zero is still small and is the youngest of three challenger banks in its sector. “We’re still small, with a low cost base, but growing very fast,” he said. 

“For example, our December Card turnover grew 70% on the previous December. We achieved that while suffering no Card Fraud losses.”

“It is unlikely that any other bank in the world has such a high growth rate as well as zero fraud losses.”