Nedbank Malawi migrates to new switch

Nedbank Malawi will from next Monday migrate to its own switch called Postilion from Malawi Switch (Malswitch), a development the bank’s official said is in line with its key strategic business direction.

“This new postilion switch, therefore, forms a platform or a spring board from which our innovative products will sprout from going forward.

“Through this switch, we will add more relevant products to our existing suite of safe, convenient and reliable products,” said the bank’s head of retail and SME banking Stanley Mkwamba on Friday in Blantyre.

He said with the new switch their customers will not be able to use old or current automated teller machines (ATMs) cards on the new platform and that their customers will be given new cards for free.

“All our ATMs will migrate to this new switch by March 23 2015 implying that all old ATM cards will no longer be of use this date.”

Mkwamba touted the new switch as robust, saying unlike in the past, it guarantees “very high up times”.

He said the bank’s customers will no longer experience inconveniences that come with frequent down times as their ATMs will be up most of the time.

The bank officials said the new switch allows Nedbank Malawi the opportunity to plug into some of the new and cutting age profiles that come with this technology, widening their product base to serve their customers base.

All the country’s banks are expected to connect to the National Switch (Nat Switch), a shared switch platform that will ensure bank’s interoperability, which was launched a few weeks ago.

But Nedbank Malawi officials said their new switch is not in any way connected to Nat Switch, because theirs is an internal switch for the bank’s operations.