How Errandpay is driving financial inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa by supporting fintechs, MFBs and MFIs – TechEconomy.ng

Many financial organizations believe that fintechs, microfinance banks (MFBs) and microfinance institutions (MFIs) are heaven in the global effort to alleviate poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

Unfortunately, this impression is very far removed from reality.

Searching the World Bank’s 2021 report on Financial Inclusion, Digital Payments and Resilience in the Age of COVID-19, one would find that over 65% of the region still has restricted access to deposit and lending facilities operated by financial institutions to be provided.

Not only are these financial services vital to the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), they are also an essential part of improving money markets and promoting the social development of individuals.

Fintechs, MFIs and MFBs need more technology-centric solutions, proper accounting and reporting mechanisms, clear credit policies and better internal controls to deliver these life-changing services. Fortunately, Errandpay’s robust agency banking and mobile money models promise to improve such solutions.

Errandpay is a fintech company operating in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda, providing financial service providers with innovative products for processing real-time transactions with agency banking applications and affordable point-of-sales (PoS) terminals, among others .

The company’s agency banking solution is fully white-labeled and reduces the top barriers in banks’ go-to-market strategies.

Banking stressors such as recruiting and managing developers, setting and meeting schedules, forecasting, collecting and aggregating vendors, negotiating with other banks, client onboarding and documentation are eliminated. The time spent with these stressors is reduced from years, sometimes months, to days.

Agency banking, also known as branchless banking, typically allows banks to expand their branches, reach, and customers by using authorized agents who can provide banking services such as deposit and lending facilities through authorized PoS machines.

A more detailed description; Aliyu, a Hausa trader in north-eastern Nigeria, has been authorized by a bank to operate a PoS machine. Aliyu helps his family, neighbors and friends send, receive and withdraw money with his PoS device. Through Aliyu, the bank can reach more customers in indigenous areas. Aliyu can earn additional income through commissions from every transaction that he processes on his PoS device.

As an agent, Aliyu is in the best position to help his bank with credit decisions as he knows his customers better. He knows their ability to repay, financial stability, credit ratings, etc. These insights can help his bank maintain the quality of its assets.

Errandpay is passionate about driving financial inclusion by ensuring its API can be easily integrated by any financial institution planning to use the platform to accelerate its expansion plans across the continent.

“Building technology is difficult and time-consuming, so we’ve made developer-friendly and easy-to-integrate APIs available to all of our partners. From white label services to aggregation of key services and the ability to seamlessly integrate with any core banking platform in Africa, Errandpay’s features are fully customizable to the needs of each potential partner. Fintechs, MFBs and MFIs can focus less on building technologies and more on empowering their structures through the platform.”

Errandpay’s vision is to convert authorized agents into human MFBs. However, this dream can only be realized through further partnerships.

“As we have rightly seen across sub-Saharan Africa over the past 10 years, the fintech revolution has been driven largely by collaboration. One of ErrandPay’s core strategies is to work with microfinance banks, financial institutions, aggregators, agents, fintech companies and many more. We built our technology for ambitious banks, organizations, founders and CEOs who want to scale super fast,” said Paul Dureke.

Since March 2022, Errandpay’s products have significantly improved the financial lives of many people through its 15 dedicated fintech partners across Africa.

The platform can facilitate lending, insurance and investment products, credit card payments, registration for various services, etc. while its partners avoid additional fees for using the platform.

Onboarding to Errandpay is free

The platform is accessible on errandpay.com and/or its app on iOS and Android devices, while the supporting technical team can be reached at [email protected].