Temiloluwa O’Peters
As part of efforts to promote and deepen financial inclusion among the unbanked and underbanked population in Nigeria, 9mobile, Sanef, Ecobank and other stakeholders in the financial sector have discussed actualising the cashless vision of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
According to a statement issued on Monday, this was at the virtual forum series, organized by Ecobank and Vanguard, which was themed ‘Mobile Payment Innovation and Closing the Financial Inclusion Gap – post COVID-19’.
In his remarks, the CBN Director, Payment System, Jimoh Musa, noted that Nigeria had made a commitment to reduce the numbers of persons excluded from the financial services from 46 per cent to 20 per cent in 2020.
He further noted that the apex bank recognised that the requirement for opening bank accounts was very stringent, with the requirements of valid documents such as passports and driver’s licenses.
Musa stressed that the idea and the strategy of the CBN to introduce agent banking and mobile money was brought to solve the access, problem, proximity issues.
“One of the things that we found was that it was very difficult for people in the rural communities to have access to financial touchpoints to the extent that people in the rural communities would have to travel for 10 to 20 minutes to get to the nearest financial touchpoint,” he said.
Responding to the CBN’s charge, the Chief Executive Officer of 9mobile, Alan Sinfield, stated that the telecom company was continually exploring opportunities to bring creative solutions to Nigerians.
According to him, 9PSB provided an opportunity to further pursue this commitment by stimulating savings and investments as more liquidity was mobilised from the informal sector into the mainstream financial system.
“This will translate into increased economic activities in the informal sector and the overall economy,” he said.
Sinfield pointed out the need for collaborations and partnerships to achieve more inclusion, noting that telcos in Nigeria had customer data advantage that Nigeria’s financial institutions could benefit from to deepen their penetration.“Even though banking started long before mobile telecommunications, there are more active mobile lines than active bank accounts. We are willing to partner with financial institutions to reach out to the unbanked and under-banked population in Nigeria,” the CEO said.The Managing Director and Regional Executive of Ecobank Nigeria, Patrick Akinwuntan, said Nigeria’s population of over 200 million people underscored the unique potential inherent in the financial inclusion drive.He emphasised the importance of using financial inclusion for poverty […]