“Consumers today look for seamless and frictionless payment”

Jean Noel Samy, Head of  Cards & Payments at ABSA

At ABSA’s Head Office in Ebene on Wednesday 18 March, Jean Noel Samy, Cards & Payments Head at ABSA, used the launch of the bank’s virtual card to situate the product within a much longer evolution in payments; from barter and cash to chip, contactless and tokenised transactions. Addressing Visa representatives, the media and colleagues, he said the new offer responds to growing customer demand for flexibility, security, transparency and more seamless payment experiences.

At the launch of ABSA’s virtual card in Ebene on Wednesday 18 March, Jean Noel Samy, the bank’s Cards & Payments Head, presented the new product as part of a broader progression in payments. 

 

“Today, payment acceptance is no longer confined to the physical terminal.”

 

From a consumer perspective, he showed how innovative payment methods have continually adapted to new patterns of use, tracing the shift from the barter system to cash, then debit cards, recalling along the way the early days of ATMs, when some people believed “there was someone in the ATM sitting and paying the customer”. He then pointed to successive developments in card technology, from magnetic stripe to PIN and chip, followed by EMV compliance, before more recent advances such as contactless payments during the Covid period and, more recently, tokenisation.

Jean Noel Samy argued that the merchant side had gone through a comparable transformation. He referred to a time when payments were accepted through a “zigzag machine” using paper vouchers, before point-of-sale devices evolved alongside the cards themselves. Contactless acceptance and chip functionality followed. Today, he stressed, payment acceptance is no longer confined to the physical terminal. 

“POS is not the only means of accepting payment,” he stated, noting the expansion of online transactions and cross-border payments that now allow customers to transact “anywhere, anytime” and receive goods delivered to their residence.

For the Head of Cards & Payments at ABSA, the common thread across these developments is the set of expectations customers now bring to payment services. “They want to see, to have flexibility, to have secure payment… And they want to have more control on what they are doing. More transparency,” he said. “In a simpler way, consumers today look for seamless and frictionless payment.”

For Jean Noel Samy, this is where ABSA wants to position itself as an institution. Highlighting the bank’s own record of innovation over the past decade, he recalled that the bank was the first on the market to launch a virtual tokenised card through the ABSA app. Other initiatives include the introduction of cardless ATM access, as well as QR-based payment capability through scan-to-pay features.

“I think ABSA, throughout this past 10 years, has remained focused on innovation, with so many new products, new things coming out for our customers,” he said. 

Adding that the bank did not intend to stop there, he described ABSA as being on “a very good trend in terms of innovation.”

As the world becomes more connected, he said, customer requirements continue to evolve, and banks must respond accordingly. He presented the product being unveiled as “a step that reflects the evolution of payment,” “a step that reflects the expectation of modern customers” and one that ABSA was proud to launch with Visa, whose “global network expertise continues to support innovation in the world of digital payments.”