To promote “agency banking” in rural areas, the United Nations Investment Agency (UNCDF) organizes since Thursday, October 4 in the region of Kaolack (200 km from Dakar) its third session of the year 2018, relocated to rural areas through its MM4P program.
In partnership with the MasterCard Foundation, this session has seen the participation of digital financial service providers, representatives of institutions such as the BCEAO, ECOBANK, regulators and issuers of electronic money.
This rural working group aims to address the issues of “Agency Banking” and enable low-income people to access the new opportunities offered by digital financial services to contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals. .
Indeed, “Agency Banking” is a model by which a traditional bank effectively and inexpensively expands its banking network through the use of authorized agents.
This model allows the bank to provide low risk services to rural and remote clients who are difficult to serve with traditional bank branches.
The goal is to reach 30% of the adult population actively using digital finance in Senegal in 2019.
To achieve this, the program provides technical and financial assistance to digital financial service providers for the expansion of digital finance.
In this sense, several projects have already been completed and others underway. These include, among others, the feasibility study on the digitization of the pensions of 30,000 retirees in the public service in partnership with the Treasury, and the promotion of the employability of young people in peri-urban and rural areas. .
This working group has enabled Senegalese digital actors to identify the difficulties faced by rural distributors, who are mostly technical and financial.
As a reminder, since its launch in Senegal in 2015, MM4P organizes a quarterly working group to enable stakeholders to share innovations and best practices in digital financial services (SFN) to better guide the supply of connected services for the benefit of vulnerable population.
