Centenary Bank, uganda's leading bank with many customers in uganda has launched its mobile banking plantiform called ELMA. This platform hosts CenteMobile. This platform was developed in partnership with Craft Silicon. According to Craft Silicon, ELMA is a mobile shopping and bill payment solution , that intergrates with bank and allows mobile users to purchase , pay bills , and access other services such as manage money , news subscription , stock exhange and mobile top ups.

On the launch Bank of Uganda's acting executive director supervision Ben Sekabira, urged banks to ensure that they operate a secure and robust mobile banking platform to protect customers’ mobile bank accounts.

He said “A number of banks are now offering mobile banking products. It is in light of this that I re-iterate that every new product comes with its attendant risks. It is imperative that potential risks are identified and appropriate mitigation measures developed,”

“A reliable, secure and efficient platform is extremely important to maintain customer confidence in the mobile banking services and facilitate adoption of usage of these services by the wider population,” he added.

Fabian Kasi, the Centenary Bank managing director, said the launch of the platform will interest more players in the banking industry to sign up as a demonstration of the bank’s commitment to enhance financial inclusion in Uganda.

“Today, the penetration of mobile telecommunication networks in the most remote villages of Uganda makes it possible for Centenary Bank to serve millions of unbanked people in those locations,” Kasi said.

Following the launch of CenteMobile and ELMA in Uganda, the bank is now eyeing 17 million Ugandans with mobile phones, including the 8.9 million registered mobile money customers.

“We believe with this, the number of accounts in the industry will also increase from the current approxiomately four million within a relatively short period,” said Kasi.

From: New Vision