Found out today that Icanonline is closing its doors. After my post on open source and banking it’s now even more urgent to find a decent bank! In a way it’s a relief, another opportunity to leave Nedbank. I’ve always disliked them. To me, they have a reputation as being expensive and inefficient. Twice they’ve bought my existing bank and made the experience worse. My first ‘bank’ account was with the Permanent Building Society, then Nedcor took them over and moved me to the People’s Bank – horrendous charges, useless interest and bad service meant it never lived up to its name. I also had to move to a branch miles away from where I lived. I never understood why anyone with lower income, which is supposedly the target market, would choose such an expensive bank.
So, I moved to Icanonline, then owned by NBS (part of the efficient NBS/BOE/Pep group), which was great for a while, until Nedbank came along and took them over too, immediately upping the charges (this was also around the time of 20Twenty’s hiatus). Nedbank’s strategy then lurched into deciding to use only one brand, which meant they closed the superb Cape of Good Hope Bank which my partner used. She also refused to stay with Nedbank and moved to FNB. The FNB branch next door to the Cape of Good Hope branch apparently told her that 80% (an exaggeration I’m sure) of COGHB client’s had moved to them. Nedbank, not content with alienating one segment of their customer base, are now in the process of doing the same with NBS, moving them to People’s Bank. Last time I was at the friendly NBS I use when I need to do some physical banking, a customer was having an argument at having their account summarily moved to a distant People’s Bank. The staff could only shrug and blame Nedbank management for the policy decision. So, now I have another chance to leave Nedbank! They’ve bought me twice, and twice I’ve had the pleasure of leaving them.
The problem still remains though, where to go. In South Africa, bank services are not great. I’ve applied for a 20Twenty account on a Windows machine, after the hopeless code wouldn’t allow me to submit using anything but Internet Explorer – not a good start, but what are my options? Does anyone have suggestions?
Here’s a comment from an ex-20Twenty employee. He didn’t want to leave a comment, but emailed me instead:
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What I can say is you may not always get what you want, but at least if
there are issues the guys are (or were anyway) pretty friendly.
Regarding the IE thing, I was personally a campaigner for the
Netscape/Apple IE/etc usage and at a time (on launch) the site was
non-ie compliant and that was how the bank was launched, but the reality is that when there where 40 000 customers 99.8% of the user based was IE and the cost justification of sorting out the netscape/opera/fire fox etc guys was just not a bang for buck option so you would need to pass on that cost to the everyone else, which seems kinda becomes unfair on 99.8% of your clientele – so you are going to be dealing with IE I am afraid. Think of this as cheaper bank charges.
Use firefox to do you banking at 20Twenty. I’ve used it for a long time now on Suse and it works great.
Even better, a friend of mine did his application in Firefox.
20Twenty is in the process of making its website open standards, but it’s a bit difficult when launching new products and employing new people etc etc. 20Twenty has suprised me a couple of times, especially with the new banking portal which works great in Firefox and Mozilla.
Internet Browsing and Banking for me was a simple click on a mouse, but since I joined 20twenty and started hanging around the Forum and talking about Internet Browsing, I started taking a concern.I’m not that IT related or inclinded and its just a pity that MAC OS users don’t get any joy with the 20twenty website, but we’ve been assured that their [20twenty] development team are working on making the website compliant to all Internet Browsers. Though its just a matter of time. If you don’t like using IE, then Firefox is you best bet, even I am using it and its a real pleaser.
Good choice. I am now also in the unfortunate position of having to find another bank for my wife. The unfortunate problem many will sit with, is that 20twenty has a minimum ITC entrance level. Again, this is to lower charges for clientele, but is irritating nonetheless, especially as I already have an account with 20twenty. I have discussed this with 20twenty at length, and am satisfied with their answers, but I still gripe about it, as I’m sure others will too.
Strange Pieter. I was unable to complete my application for 20Twenty but I was assured that I would have no problem banking with 20Twenty with Mozilla. Lets hope 🙂
please advise of this 20Twenty bank account. Is it like icanonline? Plse send details.
Well actually 20Twenty has closed down too. Type 20Twenty in the search on the right hand side, and see some more recent posts. Currently I’m using Pick n Pay Go Banking, which is probably the most Icanonline-like of the remaining banks.
7 years later and I’ve just re-discovered my old icanonline card. This website is the only Google hit I could found on icanonline. The card was kept in a box of all kinds of childhood memories. Today Im at FNB and with all their great bleeding edge tech I’m quite happy. Instant Accounting, Incontact, VOIP, ADSL and other e-services, iPhone App, Mobile web app etc. When it comes to service… I think all of the major banks are equally useless, if you find a BRANCH with personnel that manages your requests to your satisfaction… stick to the bank! BTW I’m a business banking user