Having launched a brand new (and free) banking service for consumers, Bank Zero has turned its attention to business banking.
Michael Jordaan, the neobank’s chair, says the company is bringing the “simple, effective and technology-driven approach” to banking for businesses.
“Bank Zero is ushering an innovative new approach far from the legacy ‘me-too’ solutions of traditional banks,” he says.
“We have completely rethought commercial banking to bring it into the digital age. We’ve built it from the ground up, which means we have no legacy systems that are both cumbersome and costly, leading to inefficiency and high bank charges.”
Built from scratch by a team of senior bankers, many of whom worked with Jordaan when he was CEO of FNB, the neobank is trying to reinvent banking – based on the collective experience of running one of the country’s big four banks.
The deep understanding these executives have is the reason Bank Zero is able to innovate the way it does, Jordaan has previously told me, because they know how those systems work.
Security FTW
One of Bank Zero’s highlights is that it hasn’t had any fraud since it launched in August 2021.
“While all the global banks have come to accept a certain percentage of transactions as fraudulent, this plucky SA startup has innovated the fraud risk away,” Jordaan told Stuff at the time.
Card fraud in South Africa was R1.2bn in 2021, having increased 17% that year, he says according to Bank Zero.
“We’re very proud that an African startup has cracked this huge global problem,” Jordaan said.
Read More: Bank Zero has fraud zero
Now Bank Zero wants to bring its other enhancements to business banking – simplifying a process that is too complicated for most small businesses.
CEO Yatin Narsai says it was a “complex project, but the end result is ground-breaking”.
He says “Because we were able to design the system as a whole, it works seamlessly with the user in mind. Everything from setting up your in-house banking team, changing mandates, and granting access privileges, to making payments is all done within the app. It’s easy to set up and manage a flexible team of in-house ‘relationship bankers’ to do the legwork, and authorisers to approve transactions.”
Based on a recent Moneyweb price comparison, Bank Zero costs are around 85% cheaper than all the Big Four banks, which cost from R463 to R769 per month.
Is that a spreadsheet or are you just happy to see me?
Another significant advantage is security. When account details are changed, these are flagged, while supporting documents can be added to payments for authorisation, says Narsai.
“It’s designed to enhance productivity while being very secure. Some business customers also enjoy using our informative scheduled payments and transfers to automate regular payments.”
Instead of the usual PDFs at the end of the month, Bank Zero offers features like downloading transaction histories into spreadsheets, while it is fully integrated with Xero Accounting.
Bank Zero Commercial Banking will also supply iKhokha card machines, as well as set up business debit cards for staff.
“Bank Zero’s approach is radically different: we focused on making it simple to use, transparent, secure, robust—and with zero bank fees,” Yatin says. “The foundation for doing bulk payments and collections is in place, and will be released later.”