ZunguZ grows as personal finance gets social

May 2, 2012 - PRLog -- Local serial high-impact entrepreneur and technology specialist, Robert Sussman, one of the faces behind the ZunguZ online micro-payment platform, says the global interest in the convergence of banking services and social networks indicates the progress the country has made in advancing consumer financial service facilities through technology.

Sussman points to numerous cases around the world of banks looking to invest in credible online payment platforms that enable consumers to benefit from conducting banking services via social networks.  

One of these examples is the ICICI Bank, reportedly the largest private bank in India. The business has developed an application that enables customers to use their Facebook accounts to initiate a number of services. These include checking account balances, solicit statements and upgrade cards.

Banks are jockeying for position to be early adopters of credible, safe technology to extend their services and this is where ZunguZ is positioned to add value says Sussman.

ZunguZ is a multi-tier cloud platform that integrates into the social graph (social networking and the user), specifically users of Facebook. The offering has now reached its second tier of development.

The company is an online payment platform that facilitates the receiving and transfer of money on social networks. The service is offered without any transaction charges and there is no need for specific bank account or personal details like email addresses.

To stand out amid an increasingly competitive environment, ZunguZ organisers have integrated a combination of expertise, industry knowledge, innovative technology and experience to develop the offering.

The result has been a mature, technologically sound offering. The initial solution has now entered its second phase of developed and the latest version available is 1.3.5.1.

The offering is people-centric and it features a layer of intelligence that surpasses that of competitors. Its Z-button, a customisable payment request button that any user can build and instantly publish to their Facebook wall, reflects this.

This feature is meant for micro-payments only, as these are amounts that a user would feel comfortable asking others to match or give.

At no point does ZunguZ come into direct contact with monies, it simply facilitates the payment for the users.

The Z-button feature also allows users to track the progress of payments, to control and regulate what is paid by whom and when.  

“According to an article posted on HumanIPO, Facebook has over 900 million users with over 450 million logging in everyday. Our offering connects banking systems to the social graph. This is the growth that ZunguZ wants to leverage of and this is where we believe we have a commanding lead in the market,” says Sussman.

Heading into the social retail space

Management at ZunguZ is excited about ‘social gifting’, the emerging buzzword in ecommerce which refers to the use of the social graph to purchase and exchange gifts.

Another of the offering’s main purposes, upon inception, is the embedded intelligence  of ZunguZ to influence the purchasing decisions of those who engage with social networks.

Media reports state that this trend is being driven by global retailers wanting to leverage off innovative ways to get their wares into stores, without impacting on the strength of their offerings.

“It’s an exciting area of development within social media, one that marries the qualities of traditional retail channels with the power of the Internet. ZunguZ is strategically positioned to   benefit users as the disciplines of finance and online business development continue to merge.”