Many financial organisations believe that Fintechs, Microfinance Banks (MFBs), and Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are seventh heavens in the global effort to alleviate poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Unfortunately, this impression is very far from reality.
Filtering through the World Bank’s 2021 report on Financial Inclusion, Digital Payments, and Resilience in the Age of COVID-19, one would find that over 65% of the region still has limited access to deposit and credit facilities provided by financial institutions.
Not only are these financial services essential to the growth of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs), they are integral to improving the money markets and fostering social development amongst individuals.
Fintechs, MFIs and MFBs require more technologically-driven solutions, proper bookkeeping and reporting mechanisms, clear credit policies and better internal controls to provide these life-altering services. Fortunately, Errandpay’s robust agency banking and mobile money models promise to enhance such solutions.
Errandpay is a fintech company operating across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda, providing financial services providers with agency banking applications and affordable point of sales (PoS) terminals, amongst other innovative products for processing real-time transactions.
The company’s agency banking solution is entirely white label and reduces major obstacles in go-to-market strategies banks experience.
Banking stressors like recruiting and managing developers, setting and meeting timelines, projecting, collecting and aggregating vendors, negotiating with other banks, customer onboarding and documentation are eliminated. Time spent on these stressors is reduced from years, sometimes months, to days.
Agency banking, also known as branchless banking, usually allows banks to expand their branches, reach and customers by using authorised agents who can offer banking services like deposit and credit facilities using authorised PoS machines.
A more detailed description; Aliyu, an Hausa retailer in the North Eastern part of Nigeria, has been authorised to operate a PoS machine by a bank. Aliyu helps his family, neighbours, and friends send, receive and withdraw money using his PoS machine. Through Aliyu, the bank can reach more customers in indigenous areas. Aliyu can earn additional income from commissions from each transaction he processes on his PoS device.
As an agent, Aliyu is in the best position to help his bank make lending decisions because he is more familiar with his customers. He knows their repayment capacity, financial stability, credit ratings, etc. These insights can help his bank maintain its asset quality.
Errandpay is passionate about driving financial inclusion by ensuring its API can easily be integrated by any financial institution planning to leverage the platform to expedite its expansion plans across the continent.