SBM (finally) launched its mobile banking apps!

Long due since the launch of their new banking system (including a new Internet Banking web site) back in September 2016, the mobile apps have finally been publicly announced yesterday. Designed to run on iOS and Android only, these apps can be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store respectively. Unfortunately, if you head over directly to SBM’s internet banking page to look for the link for the apps, stop! They haven’t updated their pages yet! Nothing on their home page nor in their News & Events corner at the time of writing this article.

After registering as a new user, you will receive a OTP (One Time Password) on the mobile number and email recorded in your SBM Account. The app is straight-forward and the basic functions are there :

• Checking account balance, mini statement and transaction history
• Money transfers to other SBM, non SBM accounts, credit cards and prepaid cards
• Mobile Topup to Orange and Emtel numbers
• Bills payment
• Account settings

Improvements

To start with, we have a working app and we should be thankful to SBM for finally publishing the app to the different stores. SBM users can now access their accounts more rapidly and easily from their smartphones without having to zoom on the internet banking site which hasn’t been designed for use on mobile browsers. Feature-wise, I like the app because it provides the most common and basic needs of users. This said, the design of the app can be enhanced for a better user interface. There’s no need to hide to say that the design is damned ugly and looks like it was designed in the 1950’s. This makes me remember their old Internet Banking web site.

This said, webmasters, please do the needful to update your pages!

Another interesting improvement for iOS users is the integration of TouchID for enabling the app to recognize fingerprint and use the iPhone’s sensor to enable logging into the app. But I know that this is far-fetched and users can probably get this feature by 2050. Am I wrong to state this?

Should you download the mobile apps?

There’s no reason not to download it if you are a SBM customer. As I mentioned, it is much user friendly than using the desktop version of the IB site. It works flawlessly and hopefully, it does not contain any serious bugs or security issue.

Links : Apple App Store and Google Play Store.