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Ethiopia : MOBILE BANKING gets green signal in Ethiopia [TendersInfo (India)]
[November 19, 2012]

Ethiopia : MOBILE BANKING gets green signal in Ethiopia [TendersInfo (India)]


(TendersInfo (India) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Ethiopia has also given approval for mobile banking. Earlier this year, the World Bank reported that seventy-five percent of the world s poor are unbanked , which means around two point five billion people. Banking through mobile telephones helps people to be a part of financial services even if they are not near a bank office. Only Ethiopia and Zimbabwe were not providing mobile money services in Africa. Now, Ethiopia has come out from that list. BelCash and M-Birr are mobile banking technology providers.



Dutch company BelCash has teamed up with banks to give easier access to financing through bank accounts. Ireland-based M-Birr is a mobile money service which associates with micro finance groups where no registration at a bank is required. In the past four years, the number of mobile users grew from three to seventeen million in the nation. Ethiopia s telecommunications provider, Ethio Telecom, hopes that the number will touch forty million in the next three years. The government has perfect control over Ethiopia s telecommunications market and there is only one provider as competition is not permitted. M-Birr General Manager Thierry Artaud says Ethiopia s neighbors have several mobile providers. "If you look at your neighbors, Kenya, Tanzania Uganda, they all have multiple mobile operators and they all have mobile money services and even multiple mobile money services. Ethiopia conducted a research on other developing countries with mobile banking. National Bank of Ethiopia officials visited Kenya, Pakistan and Brazil. Frezer Ayalew from National Bank of Ethiopia said that the mobile banking services would help the country. For the economy it has great contribution in terms of mobilizing domestic savings with these services.

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