In many African countries, especially in the West African Sub-region, the activities of “Mobile Money Agents” abound.
Who are Mobile Money Agents?
MOBILE MONEY AGENT
Mobile Money Agents are third party individuals who carry out banking activities which include;
- deposit and withdrawal of funds
- bills payments, etc.
In many rural communities, there are no Banking institutions. If you need a sneak peek into how people used to keep their money before the advent of the Mobile money agents, you may want to check out this post by @SholaIB where he talked about the Piggybank.
More than reading the post, take some time to go through the Comments and see just how many people have used this option.
Mobile Money agents give all of the people living in rural communities the option to deposit money and withdraw their money through a 3rd party associated with a bank at a stipulated fee.
Do Mobile Money Agents operate in your community?
The prompt (for me) to register as an agent came as a result of the situation that I described above; the closest bank is located about 7 kilometres away and the closest ATM is about 1.6 kilometres away 
I have a P.O.S. machine at My Store, So, I registered as a Mobile Money Agent about three years ago to alleviate the sufferings of my people.
COVID-19 INCENTIVE
I was sitting quietly yesterday (not quite 
) when I was contacted by ‘the company’ that; “their company was sharing ‘something’ to their agents” across Nigeria. 
It was delivered and I just could not help but smile. In the “drawstring bag” was;
- A stash of Nose Masks
- A bottle of Hand Sanitizer
What a thoughtful gift at this time, as the Agents will have to interact with people all day long especially with the “restrictive operations of the bank”.
It was a breath of fresh air to actually see a company associated with Nigeria doing something ‘altruistic’.
What are the initiatives the businesses in your community have taken during this Covid-19 Pandemic?
Please share with me.
P.S.:- Just in case you see me looking so very tired in a picture somewhere, this is the backstory
. Thank you for tagging me. That’s a beautiful post. It’s very informative and financial. I studied finance and your post just reminds me of some of our write ups and little project work while I was at the university.
