Thokozani Zuma, an innovation junkie who loves testing new and exciting tech, grabbed the opportunity to apply for a special invite to join Bank Zero during its Beta testing phase. He obviously was planning to put Bank Zero through its paces and rigorously tested every function this new powerful digital bank had to offer.

One function, amongst a host of others, that wowed him was the extra info provided for ‘Send Money’. The simple ability to enter someone’s cell number and the amount, and then an SMS is sent with a redeemable token (to be cashed out at specific retailers), isn’t special in itself – most banks offer this. The Bank Zero innovation starts once the ‘confirm’ button is tapped.

In the past he used to worry terribly, once the SMS token was sent to his not-so-young-and technophobe-mom: has she has cashed out the money yet or did she get stuck, possibly just forgetting to do it?

Now Thokozani can monitor the real-time status of this money token – and with a broad smile on his face, he could enthusiastically watch as the status changed from ‘waiting’ to ‘cashed out’. Once though, he had to call her to find out why it showed as ‘expired’, only to find out that she was wasn’t feeling well and didn’t go to the shops that day.

The beauty of that was that the moment the status changed to ‘expired’, the money was automatically returned to his account – no longer did he have the headache of tracing where the payment is by calling a central contact centre, and then paying hefty fees to get the money back.

With this first and innovative ‘Send Money’ monitoring he now has transparent information at his fingertips. And he can call her to remind her whenever the status remains stuck on ‘waiting’. These phone calls made Mom quite proud of her financially savvy son.

Thokozani so loved the transparency and helpfulness this new innovative monitoring ability on his new Bank Zero App gave him,  that he shared the love and made a point of telling the world about it.

He also messaged to thank us for the impact this will have on so many people, as this is specifically a headache for a sender when this money (and SMS) is sent to someone who is less financially savvy – typically someone who does not even have a bank account. Or when someone lost their phone and never received the token. One worries about them and whether they came right. And now those worries have been replaced with total peace of mind.