By Tayo Oredola
In the bid to increase the level of financial inclusion across the
continent, MTN and Ecobank have signed a Memorandum of Understanding
(MoU) to put together expertise and advocate more patronage of
digitalised financial services.
Both multinationals admitted they have an enormous area of
collaborations with their presence across the continent, which can aid
the expansion drive for financial inclusion with the best products.
At the signing of the MoU in Lagos, the Group President and Chief
Executive Officer, MTN Group, Rob Shuter, said both organisations can
accelerate the efforts to bring financial inclusion to the market, which
would enable the man on the street to enjoy better financial services
with their mobile operator.
He said Ecobank is a representative of many of Africa’s market where
MTN operates, hence they share similar objective portfolio to work
together on mobile connection services, which would allow for safe and
easy mobile businesses across board, as well as simple transactional
services for customers.
Also the Group Chief Executive Officer, Ecobank Transnational Inc.,
Ade Ayeyemi, stated that both companies are trying to translate the
assets (mobile phones) in the hands of customers to points of presents,
where they can access financial services, instead of always going
tobanks.
“Almost every Nigerian and African today has a mobile phone,” he
said.Ayeyemi explained that with MTN providing access to data and
Internet services, which is available on the average customer’s device
and the fact that they can communicate with their phones, “we would now
utilise their phones to deliver avoidable monetary services across
board.”
The Ecobank boss remarked that the best way to solve the problem of
financial inclusion is by leveraging on expertise and the best available
technology to provide profitable solutions.Remittance to Africa he said
is one of the most expensive and its due to the way people want to
continue to use physical cash, he however was optimistic that with such a
platform, transportation of cash would be safe.
The MoU, which has no time bound, according to MTN, is a ground breaking
move to reach over a billion Africans, where their phones would be
converted to bank branches to access financial solutions.
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