Equity Bank Launches USSD Bank Account Opening Platform

Equity Bank has today launched a new product offering to enable easier, more convenient and more user friendly bank account opening for individuals.

Dubbed *247#, the self-service platform is here to enable any one to open up a bank account with Equity Bank by ordinarily pressing *247# on their phones.

While speaking at the launch of the product at the bank’s head office on Church House, Kampala Road, Equity Bank’s Executive Director for Commercial Banking Michael MatovuSseguya remarked that the launch of this game changing first of its kind platform is as the bank’s continued commitment to innovating to empower Equity Bank’s customers and communities.

He also added that he believes and is very much confident that the public will find this innovation very easy to work with while providing convenience, and most importantly help the unbanked individuals to easily open up bank accounts with Equity, which now boasts of over 6 Million customers, and hopes this number will double by 2024, due to its ongoing activities and roll out of products to reach more customers.

The *247# platform allows customers to interact with their bank, check their balances, make transactions, money transfers, payments etc, at zero data cost and minus necessarily requiring a smartphone as it is also accessible on feature phones or like they are locally referred to “Ez’amapaessa”. 

In his concluding remarks, he shared a step by step guide on how opening up a bank account with *247# works. All one has to do is get their valid National ID, and a registered personal phone number, and dial in the code into their phone and follow the prompts, and the account will be instantly opened and activated. For the case that one needs an ATM card, they just have to visit the nearest Equity Bank branch to collect it.

Still at the *247# product launch, Ssegujja Herbert (also professionally known as Teacher Mpamire) was unveiled as the brand ambassador for the campaign, and this will see him amplify the *247# product using his platforms and online assets like his YouTube channel, and social media.