consumers Covid-19 Indian variant

Cellphones are proving to be vital in the age of COVID-19 travel. Image: Adobe Stock

Consumers spend more on voice calls during lockdown

South African consumers have been making more voice calls to stay in touch during lockdown new research has revealed.

consumers Covid-19 Indian variant

Cellphones are proving to be vital in the age of COVID-19 travel. Image: Adobe Stock

The Covid-19 lockdown has resulted in a massive increase in consumers making voice calls in South Africa. 

This is according to FNB Connect, which had revealed that in the last 12 months, consumer spending on voice calls increased by a whopping 80% consumers also spent 55% more on data.

FNB Retail CEO, Raj Makanjee said the  trend was unsurprising as telecommunications had always been one of highest household spend categories for the bank’s individual customers. He said the bank was constantly seeking ways to ‘democratise’ access to these services by leveraging its ecosystem and digital platform.

Brad Roper, CEO of FNB Connect said the bank understood the pressure consumers were facing. 

“We understand the pressures customers are facing financially and are committed to providing better value at every opportunity. We believe that access to affordable pricing plans for devices is one of the largest impediments to South Africans getting connected for social, employment, health, and educational needs. We recently launched our popular smart devices offering on the FNB App with contracts of up to 24 months.”

Roper said it was exciting to see the growing appetite among the bank’s customers who prefer FNB Connect as their telecommunications provider. He added that in the months ahead, FNB Connect, had planned to roll-out industry leading services for SMEs to alleviate the cost of connectivity and help boost this vital part of the economy. He said this was part of the financial institution’s commitment to offer more value to both the Bank’s Retail and Commercial customers,

“We pride ourselves on putting customers at the centre of our integrated financial solutions, and the innovations we are implementing demonstrate our commitment to value-based solutions, especially during these tough economic times. Overall, our efforts will go a long way to building main-bank relationships with customers in our Retail and Commercial ecosystem,”  Roper said.