E-Financial
Sustaining Financial Inclusion Through Viable Agent Network
By Fasasi Sarafadeen Atanda
As it is today, financial inclusion is stakeholders’ slogan; the awareness has been created Agents are everywhere, but there is a threat and that threat is agent viability. There is no doubt about it all the stakeholders, such the banks, the MNO, MMO have realized that agents play very key role in delivering digital financial services.
If you look at all the strategies of the mobile network operators, mobile money operators and the banks you will find aggregators that show that agents are key in delivering strategy.
If agents are key how then do we make agents viable? My experience has shown that we have high rate of agents’ turnover as a major challenge at the same time provider performance instability as also a major issue. So, we have two major issues that will help to sustain financial inclusion.
Agents’ turnover rate is too high and also the providers or principal, their performance is also not stable. What I mean by that is, on the agents part of turnover, my visit to the field confirmed that the agents that the providers have invested in training, marketing, on boarding in the last three years, greater percentage of them are no longer in business.
That is a waste of resources. They now have new agents that they need to also train and brand again.
I am sure in the next one year if you visit those locations you will find a new sets of agents. In this situation, we are turning over experiences which are not going to lead into sustainability.
What are those things that are responsible for this? First is general skill-set or capacity. What we have is individual provider training agents which is good, if you are agents of Paga, Paga will train you; if you are agents of Opay, Opay will train you.
If you look at the content of the training it is specific to their platform, it is about how to transact on their platform, dispute resolution on their platform, and it is really not about profitability and knowledge of the business.
Actually, viability of agents is determined by making agency banking or agent network a business and not as a service. They don’t train agents on how they will be productive or cost analysis structure.
Training of agents should be handled by a neutral body or training consultants, to be able to deliver cost benefit training on the agents. Even if you are agents of operator A or agents of operator B you will be trained on how to cover your cost as well as how to remain in business.
As at today, SANEF has been playing that role; we want them to do more, they are in the best position to provider general knowledge in training of agents.
Secondly, is what I called platform quality; here we have mobile App platform, and POS Channel platform. This is a major factor responsible for agents’ turnover, by the time you rout transaction through a platform that has not been tested and certified good, you run into trouble and lose your money, this makes agents to be discouraged in the business and before you know it they will close shop.
For instance, if you are transacting with N100,000 capital and you find yourself transacting on a particular provider’s platform of inferior quality because of lack of security. We need to find out if such platforms are secured and feasible. Can you see the money you put in and the money going out? That is transaction history.
Again, what is the time of resolution of dispute and the channel of dispute resolution? Who is supervising this? We need to start certifying any transaction platform that will be used by agents. This has to do with involving stakeholders that have been able to work with all the platforms.
Thirdly is the support system, we have seen a situation where the principal for example, a bank with an agent network. The agent will come to a bank and won’t have a fair treatment in terms of say I want to quickly get cash and go back to location, No. Banks don’t see their agents as agents they want them to go and queue up in line like other customers. This discourages agents as they will spend the whole day in the bank.
This is contrary to what obtains in some Asian and South American countries where financial inclusion is flying, in those environments, the principals are supporting the agents. In Brazil, a bank opens a ‘Till account’ for the agents with a limit, as agents are transacting they don’t need to be looking for money up and down, they are transacting from the ‘Till account’ a sort of an advance. But, here there is no support from the principals.
Multiple taxes: Local government and state government are coming to agent location for one levy or the other. You can’t imagine State government revenue agents are coming, LCDA and LGA agents are coming to a single kiosk. It is worst these days as local government are looking for revenue everywhere, they have now printed a special receipt they called permit for POS.
It is important we borrow a leaf from countries like Uganda and Tanzania where there is a direct statement from central bank of those countries that certain categories of financial inclusion at the level of agents are excluded from these obnoxious taxes. I have closed about three locations in Niger State, five in Kaduna because every day local government harass us for one levy or the other.
On provider performance instability: If you check the statistics, the top five providers MMO, MNO in the past five years, they are not among the top ten today. Why?
A provider that can boast of 70,000 to 100,000 agents today they have crashed to 5,000 some are struggling for 2,000 agents. We need to find out why agents are closing shops.
Among the reasons are: 1. Most of them roll out without pilot even when they are doing pilot it is done within their office and they won’t get agents in the field involved for a proper product design feedback in order to know what the market requires.
I have witnessed a provider that rolled out agency platform believing that they are everywhere, unfortunately when they rolled out we discovered that their platform lack feasibility no agent history. You can’t view your transaction history. You don’t have feasibility into your transaction and they have spent so much money and can’t recall it again, imagine investment that has gone the drained. Today, they are not among the first ten providers because they have lost so much money.
Also in the strategy, I have checked through a lot of providers’ strategy across the channels; the MMO, MNO and the Banks led, I discovered that they don’t engage the practitioners before they design their strategy and their strategies have always be the same.
If you look at commission structure and on boarding processes, they are all the same, so the mistake of one is been repeated in the other. Strategy of agency banking is not cast in stone you have to look at what is obtainable in the market. These are some of the causes of the downfall of most of the providers.
Also the feedback channel, most of them don’t want to listen to feedback. I have seen providers’ WhatApp group platform where they are the only one authorised to give out information, agents cannot comment. This is funny. On their platform, they will add you as their agent but you cannot write anything there. It is only for passing of information to agents. How would they know what is happening in the market, how would they listen to complains? How would they get feedback to improve on their system?
More so, their objective is more of ‘Profit-centric’, in one year you want to recoup your investment, because of this that they give unrealistic targets to their staff, “On board” “On board” before you know it, they on board nonsense for them and as they are on boarding, people are disembodying.
The most successful financial inclusion organisation in Africa is Mpesa in Kenya. In their first year they did not sell any product, they only registered 400 agents compared to providers in Nigeria where in their first year they want to hit 100,000 agents. Providers in Nigeria should be Customer-centric and not Profit-centric.
They should try as much as possible to make sure that people accept their product and sale value to them if you want to retain them. Agents’ retention is nearly zero in Nigeria that is why you see agents on board today and tomorrow dis-on board.
On dispute resolution channels, today most of the MNO if they want to deploy terminals or retrieve PoS from agents, there are no define guard lines, some of them will lock some of their agents wallet so that they don’t have access to the funds again so that he can come to them and they will collect their terminal.
There should be human face to everything, today there are some MNO that throw in debit to agents account without notification, when you inquire they say it is charges of non-performance. Because you are not using their PoS very well they will debit you for the cost of the PoS. MNOs are behaving as if there are no regulation in the system.
Fasasi Sarafadeen Atanda is chief executive officer of partner de Ecosystem, an agent network management company.
PalmPay, an African digital bank fintech, is in negotiations to fund between $50 million and $100 million in a Series B financing, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
Although its target worth is unknown, its most recent round in 2021 placed it among the most valuable firms on the continent, coming in just short of unicorn status.
A representative for PalmPay stated that the 6-year-old fintech company is “in a strong financial position and exploring growth opportunities,” but the company declined to comment on the specifics of the fundraising.
People with knowledge of the company’s finances say it is now profitable after raising about $140 million in seed and Series A rounds.
The additional funding, which is anticipated to consist of both loan and stock, will support PalmPay’s growth by expanding its presence in Nigeria, growing its more recent business-oriented product line, and introducing both goods in new African and Asian countries.
PalmPay reported last month that its 35 million registered users were responsible for 15 million daily transactions.
The corporation claims that the value of these transactions now totals “tens of billions of dollars” every year.
Revenue has increased as well. According to those with knowledge of PalmPay’s finances, the company’s revenue has more than doubled since 2023, when it was $64 million, as reported by the Financial Times.
PalmPay was first introduced in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and a significant engine for fintech, in 2019.
Since traditional banks primarily served salaried or formal-sector clients, frequently with restrictions that barred mass-market users, more than half of the nation’s adults were unbanked at the time.
PalmPay saw a chance to reverse that approach by creating a digital bank from the ground up while tailoring it to the needs of the unorganized sector in Africa. To meet the needs of underbanked people and small companies, the company released an app with rapid onboarding, no transfer fees, and an expanding range of services (such as credit, savings, insurance, and bill payments).
Importantly, PalmPay relied on more than just digital acquisition. Through the PalmPay Business app and point-of-sale devices (for cash-in, cash-out services), the fintech established a massive on-the-ground network of over 1 million small businesses and agent merchants that currently serve over 10 million clients each month.
The hybrid strategy, which combines digital apps with physical touchpoints, has also been adopted by other significant fintech companies in the nation, such as OPay, Moniepoint, and Paga.
According to 25% of its members, PalmPay was their first banking account, and it promises to execute more transactions than any traditional bank in Nigeria. According to the report, that percentage rises to 60% among borrowers for loan products provided in collaboration with authorized lenders.
PalmPay’s relationship with Transsion, the Chinese phone manufacturer that controls the majority of smartphone sales in Africa with a market share of more than 40% across its brands (Tecno and Infinix), contributes to its strong distribution and marketing edge.
As part of the collaboration, PalmPay pre-installs its software on a few financed smartphones, which promotes user engagement and acquisition.
Now that it has become one of the most popular fintech applications in the nation, PalmPay is getting ready to expand its business strategy overseas.
The neobanking platform has made its first appearance outside of Africa in Tanzania and Bangladesh, where PalmPay is introducing consumer credit and device finance as stepping stones before adding more services. (With differing degrees of success, other African digital banks have extended their financial services into Asia, notably TymeBank, MNT-Halan, and FairMoney.)
According to a business representative, the company also intends to launch device financing in Nigeria.
The Fintech firm is aggressively looking into partnerships with additional original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), according to a representative for the firm, even if Transsion, who spearheaded PalmPay’s seed investment, is still a key partner.
Other investors include MediaTek, one of the biggest producers of mobile chipsets worldwide, and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.
PalmPay’s newly launched business feature, which is currently available in Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania (with South Africa in the works), handles “hundreds of millions of dollars monthly,” according to a company spokesperson. PalmPay facilitates cross-border payments for merchants who wish to send and receive payments across Africa via a single API, a persistent pain point (despite the promise of stablecoins).
Source: techbooky.com
The Board of Directors of Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), the parent company of the Ecobank Group, is pleased to announce the appointment of Ayo Adepoju, the current group chief financial officer (CFO), to the Board as Group Executive Director, effective June 4, 2025.
Ayo brings two decades of broad-based leadership experience and deep institutional knowledge as a proud product of the Ecobank Group. His expertise spans financial management, capital markets, strategic planning, capital raising and structuring, treasury management, investor relations, business performance management, governance, enterprise transformation, financial due diligence, internal control, and risk-based audit.
As a distinguished finance executive, he has been instrumental in shaping the Group’s financial transformation, capital strategy, and long-term resilience. Since joining Ecobank in 2012, he has held several key leadership positions, including Group Financial Controller, Group Head of Business Performance and Analytics, and currently Group CFO.
Over the years, Ayo has led numerous strategic initiatives, including landmark capital market transactions such as Eurobonds, Basel III-compliant instruments, and sustainability-linked debt. These efforts have significantly enhanced Ecobank’s presence in international capital markets and strengthened transparency and investor engagement.
Prior to joining Ecobank, he worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in London and Lagos, serving in the Financial Services Practice.
Commenting on the appointment, Papa Madiaw Ndiaye, Chairman of the Ecobank Group, stated: “On behalf of my fellow directors, I commend Ayo for his outstanding performance and warmly welcome him to the ETI board. His proven leadership has fostered trusted relationships with the Board and made this appointment both natural and strategic for the Group’s future.
“I believe that Ayo embodies Ecobank’s renewed talent philosophy, a homegrown leader with global exposure and a compelling track record.
“His intellect, integrity, and impact-driven leadership have long been evident. His appointment to the Board is a testament to our belief in recognizing and elevating excellence from within.”
Jeremy Awori, Group Chief Executive Officer, added: “Ayo has played a critical role in strengthening Ecobank’s financial resilience and enabling sustainable business growth.
“His ability to manage complexity, innovate in financial strategy, align finance with enterprise-wide transformation, and lead collaboratively has made him a critical member of our executive team. I look forward to deepening our partnership as we drive forward our Growth, Transformation and Returns strategy.”
Ayo holds a First-Class Honours degree from the University of Lagos and is a Fellow of both the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), UK. He also holds an MBA from Warwick Business School and a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership from Regent University, USA.
He has completed executive education programs at Wharton, London Business School, and most recently in 2024, the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. An official member of the Forbes Finance Council, he is also a published author and respected thought leader in finance and organizational strategy.
This appointment reinforces Ecobank’s continued commitment to nurturing internal talent and promoting leadership excellence across Africa.
In a strong demonstration of its commitment to community development and poverty alleviation, leading financial institution, Fidelity Bank Plc has donated food packs to over 1,500 individuals in Ihie Town, Etche Local Government Area of Rivers State, through its Food Bank initiative.
Speaking at the donation event, the Regional Bank Head, Rivers/Bayelsa 1 & South Commercial, Fidelity Bank Plc, Mr. Ibisiki Eretoru, noted that the success of the bank is essentially linked to the well-being and prosperity of the communities in which it operates.
“The Food Bank Initiative is our way of contributing to the well-being of our host communities through regular food support. Each month, with the support of our network of dedicated partners, we distribute food packs to individuals and families across the country,” Eretoru said.
He further highlighted that the Fidelity Food Bank initiative, launched in April 2023, is part of the bank’s broader corporate social responsibility drive aimed at combating hunger and improving livelihoods across Nigeria. The initiative also perfectly aligns with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 2 which aims to achieve zero hunger.
“To date, we have distributed over 200,000 food packs through similar outreaches aimed at supporting individuals, strengthening businesses and transforming entire economies,” Eretoru added.
The food distribution in Ihie town was executed in partnership with The Reach Nigeria Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on sustainable development. Speaking at the outreach, the Foundation’s CEO, Benedicta Ibiyemie Ayarete, said that the community was selected due to its need for food support during the post-planting and pre-harvest period.
“Though Ihie is an agrarian community, we identified it as needing food support at this time. The peaceful nature of the community also makes it a viable location for Fidelity Bank to sustain and grow its presence. We are proud to be part of the meaningful impact of this outreach on the people,” she explained.
Expressing his gratitude, the paramount ruler of Ihie community, His Royal Highness, Eze Richard Amadi, commended the bank’s timely intervention, describing it as “a stitch in time” and a noteworthy effort that addresses the needs of the people.
Also speaking at the event, Chairman of the Ihie Community Development Committee, Mr. Stephen Asoh, expressed appreciation to Fidelity Bank, highlighting the positive difference the donations will make in the lives of many residents.
One of the beneficiaries, Mike Okere, praised Fidelity Bank for the initiative and called on other financial institutions to emulate the bank’s approach to community engagement and impact.
The Fidelity Food Bank continues to be a beacon of hope for underserved communities across Nigeria, reflecting the bank’s unwavering commitment to social responsibility and inclusive growth.
Ranked among the best banks in Nigeria, Fidelity Bank Plc is a full-fledged Commercial Deposit Money Bank serving over 9.1 million customers through digital banking channels, its 255 business offices in Nigeria and United Kingdom subsidiary, FidBank UK Limited.
The Bank is a recipient of multiple local and international Awards, including the 2024 Excellence in Digital Transformation & MSME Banking Award by BusinessDay Banks and Financial Institutions (BAFI) Awards; the 2024 Most Innovative Mobile Banking Application award for its Fidelity Mobile App by Global Business Outlook, and the 2024 Most Innovative Investment Banking Service Provider award by Global Brands Magazine.
Additionally, the Bank was recognized as the Best Bank for SMEs in Nigeria by the Euromoney Awards for Excellence and as the Export Financing Bank of the Year by the BusinessDay Banks and Financial Institutions (BAFI) Awards.
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