Stanbic and MTN Shake Hands To Stay Connected

As an initiative to reduce customers business costs by increasing the access and speed they have to banking services, yesterday at Stanbic Bank Zambia’s head office the two companies Stanbic and MTN held a signing ceremony where MTN Zambia’s Chief Executive Officer Mr Abdul Ismail and Mr Charles Mudiwa, Chief Executive Officer at Stanbic Bank Zambia, sealed the deal which ensures that MTN Zambia will provide solutions for inter-connectivity within the entire bank’s network, countrywide!

The deal will enable MTN Zambia to provide communication solutions. This will be particularly beneficial to customers as banking processes will be enhanced, hence made quicker and more efficient, enabling the bank to reach clientele that are in rural areas or otherwise just too busy to wait in line. But all in all quicker banking means less time wasted, which means more money saved, and that is generally what their aim is.

MTN Zambia’s Chief Executive Officer Abdul Ismail was quoted saying, “The integration put MTN Zambia at the helm of communication solutions. Over the last few years and leading up to this partnership with Stanbic Bank, we have invested heavily in infrastructure technology both in Zambia and beyond our borders to ensure that our clients get value for [their] money”

Mr Ismail carried on to say that they plan to merge with other MTN Group operations across Africa to provide affordable, reliable and efficient solutions.

We are still yet to see what the two companies have in store for us with this partnership but by the sound of it all, great things are still yet to come.

However we can’t help but worry they might face a similar issue as the one happening between Verizon and Netflix in the USA right now. Both companies signed a deal in April where Netflix was using the Verizon platform to connect in order to provide better quality streaming to it’s clients. Lately though the streaming quality has been poor and Netflix took it upon themselves to encourage its consumers to blame their service provider. in this case it would mean Stanbic would always blame MTN for lack of connectivity when there’s no internet at the branches or if ATMs are down, and we mean ALL THE TIME.

Verizon’s General Counsel Randal Milch has since written a cease and desist letter to Netflix’s General Counsel David Hyman telling him to pass on the message to the Netflix administration to stop encouraging their clients to blame the ISP ‘there are many different factors that can affect traffic on the Internet, including choices by Netflix in how to connect to its customers and deliver content to them, interconnection between multiple networks, and consumer in-home issues such as in-home wiring, WiFi, and device settings and capabilities’.

Basically this is bad business and we hope this new agreement between Stanbic and MTN does not come to this level.

Image Credit: The Zim Mail, CNN