Mobile money agents have become a familiar sight across Nigeria, using handy point-of-sale machines to provide essential services to millions of people without access to banking, particularly in hard-to-reach rural areas.
Even on the streets of major cities, they have become a go-to, due to an ongoing shortage of cash at ATMs since a much-vilified redesign of the national currency, the naira, last year.
“There are three of them (agents) on my street alone,” Chi Etche, a 29-year-old media executive, told AFP. “This means I don’t need to take a bike or cab to reach the nearest bank ATM.”
But opposition is growing to their activities, with claims that some are exploiting the country’s financial plight, compounding the worst cost-of-living crisis that Nigerians have faced in decades.
“We are now buying back our money from (point-of-sale) PoS agents,” Ibrahim Adamu, a 39-year-old trader, told AFP. “The commission they charge is increasing and you can hardly get cash from the machines.”
In 2013, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)announced a drive to improve access to financial services across the country.
According to Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA), an NGO, by the end of last year, at least 74 percent of adults in Nigeria had access to financial services. Just over half (52 percent) used traditional banks.
The central bank’s decision and the cash crunch, however, have given ordinary Nigerians reliant on cash no alternative but to use agents, experts say.
“CBN policies simultaneously raised barriers for banks to offer cash and cash alternatives to their customers in pursuit of its cashless policy mandate,” said Ikemesit Effiong, a partner at Lagos-based risk consultancy SBM Intelligence.
Agents, however, often operate without identity checks of their customers or regulatory oversight, he added.
