Craft Silicon bets on upgraded app to up business

Financial technology firm, Craft Silicon, has upgraded its mobile application from Elma 2.0 to Elma 3.0, to boost its mobile software business. The latest application comes with enhanced features redesigned to take full advantage of the latest technology.

Chief Executive Kamal Budhabhatti said the Elma 3.0 is a secure mobile platform that connects directly to one’s bank, SACCO, microfinance accounts, mobile wallets or credit cards to make purchases and payments using Near field communication (NFC) technology.

The mobile commerce platform application allows users to do banking and non-banking transactions on their smartphones. Some of the redesigned and re-engineered features that come with Elma 3.0 include quick transfers, notifications, chats and hash tags, quick cheque deposits, contactless NFC merchant payments, airtime, bills and merchants and integrated banking with other chat platforms.

He noted that clients do not have to travel to the bank physically to deposit a cheque with the latest quick cheque deposit.

“A client simply takes picture of both sides of the endorsed cheque using his or her mobile device’s camera, and click to submit the cheque,” he observed.

Kamal said the Elma chat has intelligent banking functionalities to allow transactions to happen seamlessly.

“Here, a client uses hash tags for example ask for account balance, and it shown,” he noted.

“Elma’s latest version also enables clients to do banking with the applications that he or she likes or any chat available for example Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter. A client’s banking activities are no longer confined to any single application.”

He said the app is free, but the user pays for all his transactions once a month, adding that the fee varies from bank to bank, though it is not more than Sh70, irrespective of the many times one does the transactions.

Already, over 22 banks among them NIC, I&M, Imperial, Rafiki, and CFC Stanbic have taken up the application.