culled from: Business DAY
With barely five days before the commencement of the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) 'Cashless Lagos' pilot scheme geared towards reducing the cost of managing cash in the economy, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc has restated its preparedness to fully implement the policy, claiming that time is long overdue for customers, particularly small depositors, to fully embrace self-service electronic banking services. In July, the bank had adopted critical measures to encourage its customers to embrace electronic channels.
UBA introduced a new minimum opening balance of N25, 000. The rationale behind this is not far fetched as customers with less account balance, according to the bank, should migrate to either a mobile banking account, which is self-serviced through U-Mobile, a suit of electronic and m-banking services offered by the bank or any of the other electronic channels of the bank. In essence, UBA was invariably telling its customers that they don't need an account requires visiting the bank's branches.
Luqman Balogun, divisional head, e-Banking, UBA in an interview with Business Day, strongly believes that CBN's cashless drive provides ample opportunity for banks to improve the performance of their service delivery infrastructure. But more importantly, according to Balogun, electronic channels would indeed deepen the customer base of financial institutions by essentially taking financial services to the grassroots. "For UBA, we see opportunities because we want to provide solutions.
"What motivate us from an e-banking perspective are convenience, safety and security. Those are the watch word for us", he added. The above, the bank intends to achieve as customers embrace its self-service electronic banking channels namely: U-Mobile, AfriTrade, AfriCard and AfriCash. AfriCash is a secured electronic payment service that allows money transfer across African countries where UBA has a presence and can be collected within five minutes, payout been available in dollars and local currency.
On the other hand, AfriTrade is designed to give customers convenience in payments to third party in any part of the continent. Commenting on how the service works, Balogun said, "Customers of AfriTrade are required to apply for trade transaction at any UBA business office with necessary documents while the initiating UBA location advises the benefiting UBA location in the country of the beneficiary and on receipt of transaction message, beneficiary is notified immediately via phone/e-mail and official written notification is sent within 24hours enclosing original copy of the transaction instrument where applicable, and goods are shipped (or services rendered) by beneficiary."
AfriCard is a Visa Prepaid debit card variant which is set up without need for the customer to own/operate a bank account with UBA. UBA however understands the immense prospects of providing basic financial services through the mobile phones to millions of Nigerians in urban and rural communities. This, according to him, has necessitated rolled out its mobile money service targeted at over 90 million mobile phone users. With majority of Nigeria's adult population never been banked, and a meagre 30 percent of the adult population with a bank account, Phillip Oduoza, group managing director, UBA Plc argued that the pain still resides in the neck of banks to seek ways to foster financial inclusion and aid the unbanked.
"We have over 80 million connected telephone lines while only 25 million Nigerians have bank account, leaving a major gap of about 55 million. U-Mo is going to address that by providing banking services to unbanked Nigerians. They can also transfer money to any mobile number, spend the money directly from their mobile phones to pay for goods and services." According to the UBA GMD, level of required documentation is so low that the 'mobile bank account' can be opened in merely five minutes.
The mobile money service, according to Oduoza is meant to enhance the CBN 'Cash-lite' banking initiative and reduce cost of banking operations in the country, adding that the whole essence is to store money in a telephone at a cheaper rate as well as send and receive funds from any part of the country.
"With this service, a subscriber does not have to have a bank account before performing banking and other financial services. "People can store money in their phones and use it to do business. This is a major step towards realising the 'cash-lite' initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Today, banking penetration still remains low. Yinka Adedeji, chief executive officer, Afripay, revealed that U-Mo provides higher level of security than cards, given that it only requires your four-digit Personal Identification Number (PIN) and possession of your mobile phone to perform any operation.
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sludba Team
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