Mobile Money as a financial product is inherently a fast moving consumer good, which Nigerian banks are ill-equipped to market and promote, Andrew Morton posits
Financial Inclusion remains a big Nigerian problem. Indeed for an economy that is unarguably the biggest on the continent it is an indictment of sorts on the country that it has been unable to garner far more than it currently boasts in the area of financial inclusion.
Inadequate progress in the area of financial inclusion is not necessarily for lack of trying. A few years ago, for instance, the Central Bank launched a mobile money program. Mobile Money essentially enables a customer to send or receive or even store money on his mobile phone.
Nigeria’s inability to make reasonable progress in the area of Mobile Money contrasts sharply with the progress that has been recorded in many other African countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Botwana, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and neighbouring Ghana. Indeed, so successful has mobile money been that it has since broadened successfully into mobile financial services that span credits and even cross-country remittances of money. In other cases, it has expanded into insurance, helping to enhance awareness of the essence of insurance and deepen insurance penetration.
Mobile Money has been phenomenal at stimulating financial inclusion across many markets in Africa. Riding on the pervasiveness of the mobile phone, mobile money has by helping to provide essential services hitherto exclusive to formal banking, helped to tactically bring millions of people especially in developing countries, under the formal banking umbrella.
Despite the introduction of mobile money in Nigeria and its presence herein for many years, mobile money is yet to take off to any reasonable degree of success in the country. Indeed, Nigeria is classified alongside Morocco and Egypt as “sleeping giants” as far as mobile money is concerned. Fortunately for Morocco, however, it already has a very pervasive bank network across the country and as such is not as hard-pressed as Nigeria to fast-track financial inclusion.
The Central Bank of Nigeria and its partner deposit money banks seem to appreciate that Mobile Money remains in a state of arrested development in Nigeria. For some inexplicable reason, though, they seem to believe that doing the same thing over and over again to drive mobile money penetration will achieve the different result of enhancing its penetration.
. Recently, the Central Bank together with deposit money banks and others, launched a new initiative, tagged the Shared Agent Network Expansion Facilities (SANEF). The initiative is touted as one that will empower 500,000 agent networks to offer basic financial services such as cash-in, cash-out, funds transfer, bill payments, airtime purchase, BVN among others, to an estimated 50 million Nigerians who are currently under-banked. This was disclosed by the chairman of the Body of Banks’ CEOs Mr. Herbert Wigwe.
In the new arrangement, according to the CEO of GT Bank, licensed mobile money operators and super agents are expected to immediately deploy financial services agents’ outlets in under-served urban and rural areas in Nigeria with priority to be accorded the northern geopolitical zones where financial exclusion has been predominant over the years.