World Bank agreement to expand mobile banking in Ghana

The IFC said an advisory agreement it has signed with Fidelity Bank Ghana aims to expand agent and mobile banking in Ghana.

“As part of the three-year advisory project, IFC will provide Fidelity Bank with strategic and technical advice for the expansion of the agent banking service,” the IFC said. “This will include advice on risk management related to deploying digital financial services and on customer acquisition with a focus on the unbanked.”

The agreement is set to make financial services “more easily available to low-income customers, small-scale entrepreneurs and rural communities”, the IFC said.

According to the IFC, “Fidelity Bank was the first bank in Ghana to deploy agent banking to expand formal financial services to previously unbanked customers”.

Fidelity Bank “launched its inclusive banking service ‘smart account’ in 2014 with the goal to reach five million customers”, the IFC said. “The initiative is intended to help increase the rate of financial inclusion in Ghana, currently at an estimated 35% of the adult population.”

The IFC’s country manager for Ghana Ronke Ogunsulire said: “Fidelity Bank is a mobile banking pioneer in its market... there is considerable potential to further advance digital financial services in Ghana, with benefits for individuals as well as the overall economy.”

The Partnership for Financial Inclusion (PFI), a $37.4 million joint initiative of IFC and The MasterCard Foundation, is supporting the mobile banking expansion programme. PFI works to expand microfinance and advance digital financial services in sub-Saharan Africa, the IFC said. “The programme works with microfinance institutions, banks and mobile network operators across the continent to further financial inclusion.”

The IFC has said previously that the implementation of mobile financial services has proved “to be a successful way of increasing access to finance in several African markets”.

In May 2014, the IFC announced a $2m advisory services agreement with Tigo Ghana to develop and expand mobile financial services in Ghana.

Last April, the IFC and MasterCard signed an agreement to establish a risk-sharing facility, which the IFC was “expected to provide millions of people in emerging markets access to electronic payments, a crucial next step in their ongoing collaboration to increase universal financial access by 2020”.

In September, the IFC confirmed that it was committing $3.6bn in new long-term financing and support for projects in sub-Saharan Africa in fiscal year 2015. According to the IFC, “four new public-private partnership mandates were signed, which will help improve healthcare in Mozambique and boost power generation in Ghana, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo”. The IFC said it also provided “wide-ranging advice to governments and private investors in projects across 30 countries”.

A report published earlier this year by the global mobile operators' association GSMA (73-page / 7.83 MB PDF) said “sub-Saharan Africa continues to account for the majority of live mobile money services (52%)”.

GSMA said growth in mobile money services in 2015 across West Africa “was dramatic, with Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire all contributing to the substantive regional turnaround”. “In 2015, year-on-year growth in active (mobile money) agents was 60.1%, which was twice the growth rate of any other region.”

“Mobile money has significantly contributed to changing the financial inclusion landscape, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where 19 markets have more mobile money accounts than bank accounts,” GSMA said.