Dar es Salaam. The National Microfinance Bank (NMB) has
signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Vodacom Tanzania to allow its
customers to use M-Pesa services to access their NMB accounts for various
financial transactions.
The collaboration between NMB and Vodacom Tanzania is
expected to provide a financial solution and a great relief to more than 80 per
cent of the unbanked and under-banked communities in Tanzania.
Through the service, NMB customers and non-customers will now
be able to deposit their money through more than 40,000 Vodacom M-Pesa agents
countrywide directly to their bank accounts.
The initiative comes shortly after mobile phone service
providers recorded a robust growth and technological advancement that has
enabled both financially disadvantaged and urban communities in the country to
have access to banking services through mobile money transfer.
“Through this partnership of strength, NMB will be able to
extend its distribution and in turn contribute significantly in improving
people’s lives and economy in urban and remote areas of Tanzania,” said the NMB
chief executive officer, Mr Mark Wiessing.
The partnership between Vodacom and NMB is one of its kind in
the country, in which the two institutions have been playing a leadership role
in subscriptions and market share.
The MoU will now see NMB extending its services using the more
40,000 M-Pesa agents instead of its only 500 ATMs and 148 branches across the
country to reach the unbanked and under-banked communities.
For his part, Mr Jacques Voogt, the Vodacom M-Commerce chief
officer, said in order to ensure maximum and efficient transactions through the
partnership, all security checks are already in place as stipulated by the Bank
of Tanzania (BoT) through the Know Your Customer (KYC) policy.
“This is yet another milestone that we are marking today.
Vodacom is extending its M-Pesa agent network to NMB and by so doing allows NMB
customers to deposit money conveniently into their bank accounts –as well as
enabling withdraws from the bank directly into the M-Pesa ‘wallets’,” said Mr
Voogt.
He noted that the minimum sending of money through the
service will be Sh500, 000 and a maximum of Sh1 million withdrawals, but there
are still some logistics being worked out on how to increase the prescribed
amount.
The open electronic payment system can spur growth by
enabling new types of transactions, including person-to-person payments,
e-commerce, and transfer payments from government to its citizens.
“Currently, mobile money transactions are no longer limited
by closed-loop systems; you can send money to someone else even if they are not
on the same system/network. The challenge is getting different mobile money
deployments—and the banks behind them—to interact with each other,” he added.
By Sturmius Mtweve
the Citizen Reporter
the Citizen Reporter