Société Générale is reporting usage of its online banking services has more than doubled during 2001, and Internet customer registrations are up 78% since last year.
The French bank's two Internet sites, societegererale.fr and credit-du-nord.fr, totalled 522,050 registrations in December 2001, up 78% from the previous year. The total number of connections during 2001 amounted to 22.6 million compared with 10.3 million in 2000, an increase of 119%.
Usage of Messalia, Société Générale's service that allows customers to consult their account by receiving SMS messages on their mobile phone, also more than doubled with 20.4 million SMS messages sent during 2001, up 189% on last year. As at 31 December, 2001, the service had 283,112 subscribers.
Overall, Société Générale's remote banking channels (voice servers, call-centre platforms, Internet, Minitel, SMS messages, interactive television and WAP) generated 95 million customer contacts in 2001, up 32% in relation to 2000.