Yemisi Izuora
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said it is strengthening its rural banking connectivity using licensed Mobile Money Operators.
The bank said it is accelerating its financial inclusion initiative via that channel which will in addition to bring rural community people into the banking system create jobs for the masses.
It confirmed that it has so far licensed 21 Mobile Money Operators (MMOs) who are now carrying out commercial operations, while 8 others are at various stages of moving into full operations.
The Director, Banking and Payments System Department of the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN, Dipo Fatokun who provided the update while delivering a paper titled “Enhancing the Capacity of Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs)” at the NDIC 2015 FICAN workshop taking place at Bovina Hotels in Ilorin, Kwara state also said that over 98,000 agents have been enrolled with these operators.
Fatokun who was represented by Shola Agboola, an Assistant Director in the department also said that mobile money was introduced to include people at the bottom of the pyramid especially in the rural areas as they do not have access to formal financial services like banks in their community.
He stressed that these set of people in the rural area also have the need to bank, save and transfer money which they were not able to do because of lack of access to banking services.
He attributed this to lack of bank branches in the neighbourhood, low creditworthiness and inability to meet account opening criteria, adding that cost of transportation and stress in getting to the nearest bank branch prevents people from doing formal banking activities.
Fatokun however said that CBN in other to accommodate these set of people as well as people in the low income bracket in their financial inclusion campaign developed mobile money banking through the use of mobile phones.
He said that CBN recognizes the rapid growth of mobile telephony in Nigeria which has over 120 million subscribers and recognizes the fact that the majority of the unbanked have access to a mobile phone.
He further added that apart from fostering financial inclusion among the unbanked, mobile money operations is also used to create employment as over 98,000 agents have been enrolled by the operators and is the process of licensing super agents which are telecoms operators.
The super agents are expected in turns to employ more sub-agents like the recharge cards sellers, all of which will create more jobs for advertising agencies, printers and so on through trickle- down effect.
Fatokun however said that despite the beauty of this operation, it has some challenges that is facing it.
One of the problems according to him is epileptic power supply, Poor telecommunications connectivity as there may be network failures, lack of adequate awareness of the various policies and products to enhanced Customers Awareness.
He said that the CBN and other stakeholders are putting in efforts to fill the identified gaps adding that tremendous growth has been recorded by the Bank in terms of encouraging individuals to be gainfully employed outside the normal public/private sectors rush.