Steve Agbota
The Managing Director of Fortis Mobile Money Limited, Samuel Oladimeji, has said that Mobile Money target market should be the base of the pyramid customers who are often in rural or peri-urban communities, as part of efforts to reduce high level of financial exclusion in the country.
He said Nigeria is a country where mobile money is still struggling within the business environment because consumers still confuse it with mobile banking.
According to him, this gap has made most Mobile Money Operators (MMOs) to compete with the money deposit banks for the same customers, unwittingly forcing mobile money with mobile banking.
Oladimeji added that it has been really difficult for the Mobile Money Operators (MMOs) to craft a value proposition that would address the real needs of their target market even though that target markets might differ across MMOs.
He explained: “Upon this backdrop, we at Fortis Mobile Money have always believed in going the whole hog. We believe mobile money should be done the right way. We have refused to take the short cut to immediate but fleeting profit. Of course, we know that we can choose to drive value through bill payments and wallet-to-bank transfers, but then any sort of aggressive marketing of e-channels by the commercial banks would leave MMOs scrambling for market share in an already saturated market.”
Explaining further, he said, “what we have done is tailored to the needs of the customers. These products include mobile microfinance, cash transfer package and recently Digital Finance for Rural Agricultural Development (DiFRAD)”.