Ecobank Nigeria Targets 50,000 Agency Banking Locations in 2019 – MD

By Daniel Ekugo

Managing Director, Ecobank Nigeria, Mr. Patrick Akinwuntan, said the bank’s ultimate goal in 2019 is to bring banking services to all neighbourhoods in Nigeria with the view to create 50,000 agent banking locations across the country. Mr. Akinwuntan spoke at the weekend while speaking to journalists on the plans of the bank in the New Year.

Already, the bank is present in every state in the country and boasts a customer base above nine million in Nigeria and 20 million across Africa.

“We have a wide range of more than 400 physical locations, but more interestingly, we have more than 4,000m agency locations known as Ecobank Express Points which really is our approach to bringing banking to every neighbourhood and our ambition is to have 50,000 of such locations this year.

“We want to do it in such a way that in every neighbourhood you can access an Ecobank Express point to either do cash deposits or cash withdrawals to make banking more convenient for our customers”, Akinwuntan said.

He said the bank’s successes over the years is predicated on its preference for technology and it intends to leverage on this cutting-edge in the quest to ensure that more people are serviced within the broad ambit of its banking architecture.

“We have built technology platforms that ensure we are able to provide our services in reliable manner in a way that is affordable and accessible by our customers. We play a key role in collaborating with regulators and government in order to take our financial services to the doorstep of Nigerians and empower every African to participate in financial economy”, he added.

Speaking on some of the bank’s products, Akinwuntan said Ecobank Mobile, which brings banking to the pocket of Nigerians, makes it easy for every individual to open a bank account straight from their phones and do payments, buy air time, and pay electricity bills.

“We also have Ecobank Pay, a QR payment solution that makes you pay with a mobile phone. Ecobabnk pay has transparency, accountability and it is affordable. You can actually have 100 QR codes. You don’t have to protect your QR code. It does not remove money from your account; it can only be used to pay money into your account.

All these innovations are important for us to bring more digital banking into the economy and ensure that small unit business entities participate more in the economy. It enables people to do business faster, pay faster and reduces the risk of security and exposure to cards.

Our ambition is to bring the Ecobank Pay to every household, every market. We will intensify our efforts this year as we evolve into the combination of Ecobank Pay, our PoS Express Point, Ecobank Omni Lite, and Ecobank Online. All these are meant to facilitate easy payment in decent manner. We will bring all these relentlessly to every household in Nigeria. We want to make financial transaction easy, reliable and fast.

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