Clients of the First National Bank of Namibia (FNB) who receive cross-border electronic fund transfer (EFT) payments within the Common Monetary Area (CMA) will no longer be permitted to use domestic payment methods and channels.

These cross-border payment changes take effect next month.

This means all cross-border payments to an individual or a business in the CMA must instead be initiated as a global payment on the FNB App and FNB Online Banking.

FNB Namibia Payments Manager, Albert Matongela, says when making cross-border payments from FNB Namibia to other CMA countries, South Africa, Lesotho, and Eswatini, clients will need to capture and process payments on the Foreign Exchange, Forex tab within the existing online banking platform or FNB App, which can be found on the online banking and App menus.

Once the change has been effected, clients will receive an error message when processing a cross-border EFT payment with any transactional value. 

This error will inform clients that they cannot proceed with the payment. 

In this regard, clients are advised to delete their existing EFT cross-border recipients or beneficiary list, including EFT folders and EFT bulk payment files. 

Clients will need to reload all saved beneficiaries as Global Payment beneficiaries and input all the necessary information, such as the name of the bank, the name of the branch, the Swift code, the payment receiver's physical address, and the reason for the payment.

Additionally, Online Banking Enterprise (OBE) clients will also be required to channel limits and permissions to be set for individuals capturing and authorising global payments.

Global payments can only be made from a transactional account and not a credit card; the Pay2Cell functionality as well as the scheduled payments functionality are also disabled for global payments.

FNB reiterated that the payment changes are necessary because of the need to comply with regulatory requirements while also being in line with modernization expectations at national and regional levels.

The payment changes are in line with regulatory requirements, where the banking sector will be rolling out changes to how clients make and receive payments between Namibia, Eswatini, Lesotho, and South Africa, also known as 'the Common Monetary Area', as of April 15, this year.