Absa, South Africa’s largest consumer bank, announced it is expanding its CashSend mobile payment product to meet the needs of small business customers, according to South African news outlet The New Age.
The new commercial service, called CashSend Plus, is similar to the original CashSend product that allowed customers to send and receive money to people without a bank account using only cellphones. Unbanked consumers receiving funds could then collect cash from 9,000 ATMs across the country.
Gavin Opperman, Absa’s retail bank chief executive, said in the article that CashSend Plus will help small businesses make bulk payments as well as pay casual or temporary workers. The benefit to small business clients, said Opperman, is that large sums of cash are no longer required to be kept on premises and unbanked workers can withdraw money when they need it instead of having to hold onto cash.
According to the story, the CashSend service has been popular for urban-to-rural money transfers and transfers from parents to students at school. Opperman said 42 percent of money sent through CashSend was sent from ATMs, 23 percent through the Internet and 36 percent via cellphone.
Even with the launch of a small business service, Opperman said Absa will continue to focus its attentions on reaching the unbanked.
