Selcom and Akiba Bank partner to boost financial inclusion through branchless banking
Akiba Commercial Bank PLC (ACB) launches agency banking with Selcom’s flagship agent network, Selcom Huduma, to extend its network of branches and financial services cost-efficiently.
Selcom and Akiba Commercial Bank PLC at the launch of Akiba Wakala.
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Selcom’s objective is to work with its partner banks, such as ACB, to facilitate the expansion of convenient banking services in order to reduce fixed costs and operating overheads related to reaching remote customers through secure digital means.
The service extended to ACB allows the bank to cut down operational and capex costs of establishing brick-and-mortar branches and at the same time reach new customers in distant and hard-to-reach areas.
ACB, like Selcom’s other partners, has adopted the agency banking strategy towards enhancing financial inclusion across the country.
The Akiba Wakala service now gives the customer closer and wider access points to their key banking services such as cash deposit and withdrawals, school fees payments and loan payments via authorised agents. The agency banking service employing Selcom’s innovation is not only user-friendly but also quick, easy, safe, secure and affordable.
Due to the shared infrastructure and open-banking model that Selcom has in place, this offering is valuable for banks and financial institutions who are aiming to ensure that their customers have access to a ready base of liquid agents with data connectivity, which are the two biggest pain points that agents cite. Because of this, banks like ACB see the value Selcom brings to the table and Selcom Huduma then becomes an obvious choice.
“Most forward-thinking banks understand the importance of moving away from a fixed-cost branch model to a variable cost agency model where they can leverage the instant presence of existing, well-trained agents who offer banking services as part of their overall digital services portfolio. Akiba Bank further recognizes the importance of Selcom’s shared float model which allows agents to maximize the return on capital invested by not having to dedicate funds to a single service.
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With the focus on Tanzania’s financial inclusion framework, Selcom’s agency banking service has always been strategically aligned to enhance affordable reach and penetration to the underserved, underbanked and unbanked population of Tanzania.
About Selcom:
Selcom is the largest cross-segment financial and payment services provider operating in Tanzania, providing its customers in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a full range of payment processing services. Agency banking, as one of its services that began in 2012, was designed for participating banks’ customers with the objective of quickly and effortlessly providing accessible touch points for essential banking services such as deposits, withdrawals, balance enquiry, mini-statement, funds transfer and instant account opening.
About Akiba Commercial Bank PLC:
Akiba Commercial Bank Plc (ACB) commenced banking operations in August 1997 as an initiative of over 300 Tanzanian entrepreneurs who were inspired to move into micro-finance, by the moral and economical concern for the light of millions of Tanzanians. These founding members were bound together by a strong conviction that in Akiba Commercial Bank they will have the vehicle through which they would reach and help transform the lives of previously unbanked and commercially ill-equipped people around the country.