Stakeholders Urged to Boost Agency Banking

By Emma Okonji

The Chief Executive Officer, Xpress Payment Solution, Mr. Oluwadare Peekaboo has stressed the need for operators in the financial sector to cooperate work towards fast-tracking the deployment of agency banking services across the nation.

He stated this during a presentation at this year’s Payment, Identification and E-commerce event, Digital Pay Expo 2018, themed ‘Innovative Financial Services for The Vast Unserved Segments’ in Lagos.

Speaking on the topic tagged: “Agency Banking as Driver for Financial Inclusion,” Peekaboo said the conventional banks, telecom companies, regulatory agencies and other stakeholders need to work together to improve financial inclusion.

According to him, “In fact, the banks are not even interested in building branches again. If you talk of employment opportunities, agency banking will create more jobs even at a faster pace.

“Different levels of agents will be deployed across various locations to serve consumers and address issues before or during and after any financial transaction. Agency banking is more or less an enabler for the conventional banking services. “That means, we cannot do it by ourselves. This is because the banks only help to save money. And whatever transaction that takes place on our platform and has to go through the bank and the banks have to pay for the services that we render. We need the services of the telcos to be able to operate effectively.

“A typical example is the USSD services from the telcos. You also need them to send text messages and data across board. One needs to look at the services the telcos are providing and see the need to connect with it.

“This platform is needed just as we need data for our mobile devices today”.

Explaining the measure being put in place by banking agencies, Peekaboo said Xpress Payment Solutions and other operators would need to sensitise the public on the benefit of agency banking.

He also said Xpress payment solutions plans to recruit 30,000 agents within two years , 70,000 agents for its mid-term projection and 100,000 agent in the next 10 years.

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