Penetration of formal banking services remains out of reach of the ordinary Ugandan, with only about 20% of the population banked.
MTN Mobile Money continues to drive the financial inclusion agenda in Uganda and a year ago in partnership with CBA introduced MoKash, a micro savings, and loans platform accessible by all MTN customers via phone.
This was meant to enable MTN Mobile Money customers to save regularly, safely and conveniently and also provided customers a platform to borrow unsecured loans from as low as Shs3,000 to a maximum of Shs1 million using their phones.
Since the launch of MoKash a year ago, 2.5 million customers have enrolled onto the service.
Over 1.2 million of these are actively saving on MoKash while over 1million loans have been issued worth approximately Shs30bn.
“At MTN, our mission is to make customer’s lives a whole lot brighter and we introduced MoKash to give customers more services to enable them achieve their goals,” said Elsa Muzzolini, the General Manager of Mobile Financial Services at MTN Uganda.
MTN Mobile Money, according to the Finscope III*, is the largest contributor to the nonbank financial services in Uganda.
The additional feature of being able to borrow and save (Mokash); means that the unbanked can be served with financial services that have previously been a privilege of traditional bank account holders.
MTN Mobile Money (MoKash in particular), is actively complementing the government’s agenda to improve financial inclusion.
“With the introduction of additional services on the MTN Mobile Money platform it has transcended the basic sending and receiving functionality to more advanced services like payments, international remittances and saving and borrowing via the phone. We anticipate that the increased penetration will enable us achieve our bigger financial inclusion vision,” Muzzolini further commented.
With over 9 million registered subscribers on MTN Mobile Money, which represents 80% of MTN Uganda’s total subscriber base, MoKash has an immediate potential reach that extends to all MTN Mobile Money customers wherever they might be.
Ugandans using MTN Mobile Money have been able to conveniently access loans at competitive rates and easily saving while earning attractive interest rates.