Bank Zero Say The Time Is Not Right For Launch
Bank Zero are one of 3 new banks which were scheduled to launch during 2019 but have decided to wait till next year before entering the market.
Bank Zero have announced that they are going to be focusing on setting things up for a 100% go live rather than enter the market with a soft launch and test like Discovery Bank did with its first 1000 clients. They want to hit the ground running and not roll out products in incraments.
Though they had originally intended to launch this year they have had the opportunity of watching TymeBank and Discovery go through the process and have decided that consumer confidence is too low to effectively introduce their brand.
New banks often take a while to get consumers to fully commit and start to bank their salaries and savings.
Tymebank, for example, have opened 740 000 new accounts since opening but reports are that only half of them are active. They have set themselves the goal of breaking even by 2022 only. While that may seem like a long time in banking terms it is not. It take a while for consumers to start to really trust and engage with any new brand and banking is one of the harder industries to build trust in.
Discovery Bank has taken on over 22000 new client accounts and are slowly making progress towards their 1000 new clients a month goal.
South African consumers have seen a lot of big corporations up to nonsense, have seen banks getting fined or losing court cases and consumers are running the gauntlet of an economy in constant flux. It seems that the analysts are telling the big wigs at Bank Zero that now is not quite the right time to enter the market.
