The battle among South African banks over clients has intensified and at least part of the fight is being fought on the digital front. Last week Absa launched ChatBanking on WhatsApp - on which customers can pay beneficiaries, check their balance, get statements and buy airtime or electricity. The platform now boasts about 10,000 registered customers since it started operating in early July. CEO Maria Ramos, speaking to Business Times at the release on Tuesday of the bank's first set of interim results since its split from Barclays, said while digital offerings were not the only frontier, Absa wanted to respond to its customers and to where the competition was going. "We need to be digitally scalable, and it's not just about product on the app side but also how we create the efficacy in the back end . in terms of processing, in terms of robotics and in terms of the way we think about using data much more intuitively and as a game changer, so we can predict better. That's what this i...

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