Facebook, WhatsApp now tools for banking

Dar es Salaam. You can now use the Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp applications to conduct banking transactions on your mobile device, thanks to an initiative by United Bank for Africa (UBA).

The bank yesterday launched a new banking innovation that is known as ‘LEO’ which allows banking transactions to be carried on mobile devices securely and conveniently.

The innovation is already being used in other countries where UBA Group operates where it had 35 million conversations with customers and carried out over 500,000 financial transactions for more than 300,000 users since January 2018.

“UBA has decided to leverage on its financial services into the Facebook and WhatsApp messaging platforms to align banking experience with customers’ lifestyles in an unprecedented manner,” the UBA executive director for East and Southern Africa, Mr Emeke Iweriebor said in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

The Minister of State in the Vice-President’s Office (Union and Environment), Mr January Makamba, said the service was revolutionary to local banking experience and would bring services closer to customers.

“Social networks such as Facebook and WhatsApp have a lot of users here in Tanzania and it has become part of many people’s daily life. Enabling its users to access banking services through them means bringing services closer to people,” he said.

He praised UBA Tanzania for coming up with the innovative service which make financial easy and convenient.

“The number of Tanzanians holding bank account is still very small. This service will help to increase the number of people holding bank accounts,” he said.