Sterling Bank is raising service delivery level with two branded telephone handsets called One Bank and Personal Education Technology for Secondary Schools (PETSS).
The bank’s Executive Director (Strategy and Finance), Abubakar Suleiman, said at the launch of One Bank in Lagos that the objective is to deploy a brand acquisition and embellishment tool to encourage new account openings.
It is primed to improve mobile money application as well as deepen brand and customer relationship.
Mobile application brings telecommunication, entertainment and finances together to enable customers communicate, entertain, transfer, and receive money; buy airtime, carry out interbank transfers as well as meet all financial needs.
According to Sulaiman, One Bank has provided a single telephone that replaces the token given to a customer as authentication; once a customer logs in with his password, he can do his business seamlessly.
Irrespective of the customer’s network, the telecommunication, media content, and finance work together, so customers can always access his bank.
One Bank targets traders, students of colleges of education, artisans, and under-11 children to be in touch with their parents at a cost effective rate. The branded telephone is affordable while a customer who wants a high-end phone can visit the bank to pre-install and firm up the arrangement.
Suleiman said: “We have worked with an equipment manufacturer to do this and we are not selling it at a profit. The cost is lower than the market price and the customers are given the latitude to spread the payment of N3,000 over a long period of time, by paying about N200 in a month.”
He urged prospective customers to open an account at any branch of Sterling Bank and win its mobile telephone loaded with mobile applications and social media.
The bank is also deploying an on-air quiz programme where listeners can respond to questions asked by the presenter to win a Sterling Bank branded telephone.
On the second product, PETSS, Suleiman said the bank has worked with a company driven by a passion for education to replace the entire curriculum for junior secondary.
PETSS is a branded tablet telephone with the current curriculum, including 25 years of past West African Examination Council (WAEC) question papers, answers, and textbooks written and approved by the board on education.
“The bulk of the credit will go to the team of Mobile Knowledge Solutions (MKS) that has spent millions of naira to develop the product,” Suleiman explained.
“What we are doing at Sterling Bank is to back them up with our financial muscles to ensure that they acquire the hardware that will carry the content, the durability and produce at a standard cost that is affordable.
“What we are doing is to make it possible for people to pay for this over time through our non-interest payment window.”