Cashless banking in Africa leveraging Ecobank’s network

07 Mar 2018
Financial Nigeria

Summary

The mobile app offers banking services at a much cheaper cost than traditional banking, thus making it much more accessible to millions of users, thanks to the rapid growth in mobile phone use.

Ecobank Group CEO, Ade Adeyemi

Millions more people in Africa now have access to financial services. The expansion in financial access leverages digital technology to broaden the use of cashless systems. This is according to Ecobank, the leading independent pan-African banking group, whose mobile banking app is in use across 33 African countries where it operates.

Africa is now at the forefront of the fintech revolution, with 57.6% of the world’s 174 million active registered mobile money accounts (100.1 million) in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to Ecobank. Fintech in Africa is predicted to grow from $200 million to $3 billion by 2020.

Ecobank’s mobile app allows customers to check balances, pay bills and merchants, and many other services. The mobile app offers banking services at a much cheaper cost than traditional banking, thus making it much more accessible to millions of users, thanks to the rapid growth in mobile phone use.

Speaking at the Africa Tech summit, last month in Rwanda, Nshuti Lucy Mbabazi, Ecobank’s Assistant Vice President, Push Payments said: “Going digital provides not just better services and connectivity, but enables banks and businesses to unlock productivity and play a role in development.”

Ms. Mbabazi said, Rwanda, where the summit is taking place, is seeking to move from a cash-based economy to a digital one. The number of digital transactions in Rwanda increased by 11 per cent in the first half of 2017 from 1.37 million the previous year to 1.53 million in the same period, and more and more merchants and dealers are becoming access points.

“Rwanda has had a 26% growth in the volume of transactions from 8.6 million to 119 million in 2016/17, representing an increase of a third in value from Rwf 469 billion to Rwf 622 billion. Point of sale (POS) transactions in Rwanda have almost doubled in volume from 270,084 to 523,473, doubling the cash value to Rwf 32 billion,” she said.


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