Rethinking Online Banking.

By Arthur M. Katabalwa.

A while ago I found myself in need of some banking services. I am never good in such situations. I had a fascinating thought; something struck me. I was looking at the banking sector in a rather archaic way. Being a “son of the 70s”, there are things with which we are stuck in. There are processes that we hang on to until our knuckles can hardly take the weight. After all, “if it ain’t broke why mend it?” It was the great huge queues that one finds in banking halls. In my quest to find out some answers, I found myself confronted with this monstrosity. It may be made up of many individuals but it seemed to act as one. Whereas I had been happy to join one in the past and patiently wait, this time I was getting agitated by it. Why?

I  wanted to open a new bank account. This being the second time I was opening a bank account in Uganda, I was very apprehensive. Joining at the back of a long snaking queue wasn’t going to help. I was sweating profusely as I walked into this banking hall.  The Kampala heat was running riot. The streets and the buildings and the car horns and the street beggars and the boda boda bikes………they were all making me go mad. But I knew that I was going to find sanctuary in this great big hall which I had recced earlier before. It had these high ceilings. There was air conditioning. I knew that all would be good but nothing prepared me for the queue. It snaked through this great big banking hall with those ropes that are linked all around. My heart sank.

Well, the dreaded queue in banking halls is about to be made a thing of the past. Banks like Stanbic bank which are introducing an online bank account are making these queues a thing of the past. With advances in technology, the queue will be at home. Say for example if one were to be opening a new bank account the anxiety can be all encompassing. You may be that one person who is going to hold up the whole bank when you are asking if banks regulations allow for coloured passport photos or the use of a maiden name.

If one were to be opening an account online, then the anxiety of that long queue is non-existent. You are at the front of the queue. There is no one behind you. You have a virtual personal banker who has all the time that you want to spend for you. If you were to find that a certain piece of information was missing like a copy of your identity card then you will not have to go back home and pick it up queue again. In your comfort, you will come back and once again you will be at the head of the queue. At Stanbic, the process is quickly sorted out with steps that are easy to follow online. Within a short while, one has an account that is fully functioning with a bank card. The dreaded visit to a branch where one might be stuck in a queue is organised by the bank itself to minimise that inconvenience.

We are all much better off now that we are having such services unveiled in the Ugandan banking sector. We are having a sector that is bringing services closer to the people when they want those services and where they want them. The need to battle through traffic and the heat is being swept away. These are services that are fit for the economy of Uganda today. We are getting services that are making banks truly for the community.