Central Bank of Nigeria has re-affirmed its commitment to extend financial services to rural areas, through right agent and mobile banking system, so as to make impact in the lives of citizenry. Delivering a paper on the topic: “Viable Agent Banking and Mobile Payment System in Nigeria, at the 18th Seminar for Finance Correspondents and Business Editor in Umuahia, Abia State,” Director, Banking and Payments System Department, CBN, Mr. Titus Fatokun, said the apex bank was working directly with Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) and local agencies to get to the rural areas through provision of incentives. According to him, one of the obstacles to financial inclusion is cost of transaction to banks involved in servicing low-value accounts and extending physical infrastructure to remote rural areas, and the cost (in money and time) incurred by customers in remote areas to reach bank branches. Fatokun, who was represented by the Policy and Oversight Manager of CBN, Chai Gang, said this move would trigger growth in number of agents, increase activity of agents, average number of transactions per agent and the requisite growth in financial inclusion, as well as profit margins for the agents and their principals. He stated that just like in other countries, the exploration of branchless channels have made an important contribution in enhancing financial inclusion by reaching people that traditionally, branch-based structures would have been unable to reach. He said CBN had been working assiduously on agent network for banking as well as mobile payments services as channels with great potentials to overcome the distribution challenges and increase the use of financial services to the un/under-banked, thereby increasing the linkage of rural cooperatives to microfinance banks like was done in Kenya. Fatokun, however, noted that agent banking was still in the licensing review stage and therefore has not yet gone live while mobile payment operations have been live since November 2011. The Director, who stated that there was no security challenges associated to the agent banking operation did not fail to highlight factors hampering the effective operation of mobile payment to be epileptic power supply, poor telecommunication connectivity, lack of synergy between mobile payment operators and telcos and need for enhanced customer awareness. Meanwhile, Publisher of BusinessDay, Mr. Frank Aigbogun, who delivered a paper on “Communicating Financial Inclusion in Nigeria,” stressed the need for effective financial inclusion channels, which should stand out as a cornerstone of economic development framework and model.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 23:20:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015