Some stakeholders from the banking and technology sectors clamoured for a quicker adoption of mobile money in the country during the 5th mobile money expo which held recently in Lagos.
Tagged: ‘Charting Africa’s cashless future,’ the participants in the two-day event spoke on the emerging mobile money market in the country and the need to quickly drive it to maturity.
Despite the huge population of Nigeria, they decried that most Nigerians had yet to adopt the platform to transact businesses.
The Executive Director, ETranzact, a mobile money service provider, Mr. Ike Eze, lamented that despite having a population of around 176 million, only about 1.2 million Nigerians had adopted the platform.
He said, “Only about 1.2 million Nigerians have used the mobile money platform to transact business. We are at the innovative stage of the mobile money technology in the country, and the faster we move out of here, the faster its adoption and the better it will be for the country.”
He identified the mobile technology, smartphone usage adoption, Internet and mobile banking as the pushers of the mobile money revolution.
Talking about the cashless policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria, which was launched in Lagos State on January 1, 2012 and to the entire country on July 1, 2014, the Principal Associate of Mobile Money Africa, the organisers of the event, Mr. Emmanuel Okoegwale, said that mobile money adoption would drive the cashless policy of the apex bank.
The cashless policy aims at reducing the amount of physical cash an individual or an organisation circulates in the economy, and encouraging more electronic-based transactions. In addition, the cash policy aims to curb some of the negative consequences associated with the high usage of physical cash in the economy among other reasons.
Okoegwale said the adoption of mobile money would help in the realisation of the CBN’s goal.
The Strategic Account Manager, Inlaks Computers, an ICT and infrastructure solution provider, Mr. Jide Oladipo, in a paper entiled: ‘Creating a cashless Africa,’ said that mobile money adoption by Nigerians would pave way for the success of the cashless economy in Nigeria.
However, the Chief Executive Officer, Electronic Providers of Nigeria, Mrs. Onajite Regha, said there were millions of Nigerians who are still uneducated about mobile money technology.
She said unless stakeholders enlighten such Nigerians, particularly people in the rural areas of the country, there would be no growth in the adoption of the mobile money platform.
PUNCH.