CBN says lack of agency slows mobile money growth

… as transaction runs into over N5bn yearly

Although the val- ue and volume of mobile mon- ey transactions in the country run into over N5 billion yearly, it indicates a slow growth that could be at- tributed to lack of agency, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

“For mobile money to be very successful, you must have agents,” Dipo Fatokun, chairman, Nige- ria Electronic Fraud Fo- rum (NeFF), said in Lagos, weekend.

However, the apex bank, after conducting a research, came out with guidelines on the provision of agency banking, which the mobile money opera- tors are keying into.

This year the regulator released a circular on the super- agent structure such that companies can come up to provide super-agents activities where financial institutions can key into.

Fatokun, who doubles as director, banking and payments system depart- ment, CBN, expects that most of the telcos, if not all, could serve as super agents.

Meanwhile, some telcos have shown inter- est, as two of them already have obtained approval in Principle to make their agents available to finan- cial institutions for finan- cial services.

“Once this is fully deployed, you will see a great uptake in the use of mobile money,” he said in an in- terview with journalists at NeFF event.

At the event sponsored by Diamond Bank plc and Stanbic IBTC Bank, the 2014 annual report with the theme “e-Fraud: Fighting the battle, winning the war,” was unveiled by Folakemi Fatoba, director, risk management department, CBN.

According to Fatoba, the report is intended to docu- ment our achievements as an industry on the one hand, and also to showcase what individual institu- tions have done to secure our payments landscape on the other.

Reacting on the theme for the day’s discussion, “Cybersecurity: The Need for Standards,” Fatokun said: “This is appropriate because, Cybersecurity has now dominated discus- sions not just locally, but also globally.

We are no doubt aware that reviews to IT Standards for the Nige- rian financial industry have accommodated Cyberse- curity as a new scope to ad- dress the cybercrime chal- lenge of Nigerian banks.

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