Intercontinental Bank is set to retain its electronic banking leadership status in five segments of the market even as it recorded another first with the Rotary ATM card in Africa.

It would be recalled that Intercontinental Bank was the 2009 winner of the Best e-payment Bank of the Year and Best e-payment Team of the Year awards for 2009, organised by InterSwitch Limited at the Annual Techno Interactive Conference. The bank also won the Postilion’s 2008 and 2009 awards for growth based on the highest percentage growth in transaction volumes.

Investigations revealed that Intercontinental Bank is set to retain these leadership positions. An industry report on electronic banking transactions in 2010, which would soon be released indicate that Intercontinental bank is the leading bank in five categories.

It emerged as the leading bank in ATM transactions, leading bank in mobile transfer, leading bank in bill payments, leading banking in mobile Top up, leading bank Verve card issuance.

The electronic banking market in Nigeria has been growing at a phenomenal rate in the last five years. From 2005 to 2009, it grew at an average of 76 per cent in terms of value of transactions from N42 billion to N645 billion.

The volume of transactions grew at an average of 1,230 per cent per annum to 114.6 million from 1.89 million. Over the years Intercontinental Bank has firmly established itself has one of the banks driving this phenomenal growth.

Presently Intercontinental Bank has one of the largest networks of automatic teller machines (ATMs) and Point of Sale (PoS) in the industry coupled with innovative use of e-payment products, deployment of various card schemes, business and educational portals, channels schemes and services

It would be recalled that Intercontinental Bank was one of the merchant banks that converted to commercial banks in 2000. Upon its conversion, the bank embraced electronic banking as a strategy to extend and popularise its banking services as well as to achieve it vision to become one of the top five banks in the country.

This made Intercontinental Bank to achieve many first in the industry in the area of electronic banking. In addition to being one of the first banks to offer on-line real time banking services whereby a customer can access its account from any branch irrespective of the branch where his/her account is domiciled.

Intercontinental Bank was also the first to introduce the Prepaid MasterCard, a product developed in response to the yearning of teeming banking community, especially for those who travel abroad at short intervals.

Also when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) directed that all banks should stop issuance of the magnetic stripe payment cards which is fraud prone, and migrate to issue only chip and pin cards, Intercontinental Bank was the first to comply by introducing the Verve card, a chip and pin card developed by Interswitch, the foremost electronic payment processing and switching company in Nigeria.

Presently, Intercontinental Bank has the highest number of Verve cards and processes the highest number of Verve card transaction via the switch.

Recently Intercontinental Bank achieved another first with the Rotary Visa Card a new visa card developed in partnership with Rotary Club International.

Leveraging on being a principal member of Visa International, which conveys a wide array of rights and access to the Visa platform, the bank secured the mandate to be the sole issuer in Africa of the Rotary International Co-branded Visa Card.

The card is an International credit card which has the looks and feel of Rotary International. It is expected to be carried by every Rotary International member in Africa for payment of goods and services locally and internationally through any channel in the over 210 countries where the VISA Card is accepted.

Special benefit of the card which is the special reward feature, such that every time a member uses the card, Intercontinental bank Plc rewards the Rotary foundation, which eventually, will be directed towards eradicating Polio meningitis in Africa.