Financial inclusion in Africa is currently on the rise due to the constant technology advancements and innovations. Mobile money is simply one of these many innovations that enable financial inclusion in countries and communities that have limited or no access to banks.
NB: Agent banking/Mobile Money is a type of branchless banking that enables traditional banks to cost-effectively expand their network of branches and services to several other individuals and businesses through authorized agents.
The rise of mobile money operators in Nigeria has streamlined the everyday financial life of the average citizen, who can simply walk into any of these centers to perform a wide range of transactions that would have previously taken place in traditional banks dissolving more time due to the process.
ABOUT THE COMPANY
With the emergence of a competitive market for agent banking, agents are left to fend for themselves in terms of procuring constant liquidity or run the risk of losing access to their preferred bank POS as well as customer loyalty when cash requests are denied.
Well according to Moni Africa, “this is where Moni becomes a partner in the next level of their journey. Our goal at Moni is to help mobile money agents prosper!”
Moni Africa was founded in 2021 by Femi Iromini, CEO/Founder and Dapo Sobayo, CTO and co-founder.
Moni Africa is a float-as-a-service startup that provides low-interest loans to communities of mobile money agents via a referral and trust vetting system. The company has been able to disburse over $5 million (₦2 billion) in loans to thousands of agents in 22 Nigerian states and has also expanded into Benin Republic and Guinea with a team capacity of 12-13 persons; 60% of which are focused on engineering.
They have also recently been accepted into YCombinator and has raised a pre-seed round from leading investors including MAGIC Fund, Voltron Capital, Ventures Platform, Murtaza Ahmed, Ventures Kinetics, Aidi Ventures, and Kola Aina, among others.
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ABOUT THE PLATFORM
A mobile money agent is a person or business involved in helping people facilitate their financial transactions using mobile money. Moni Africa is supporting these mobile money agents in boosting their revenue, expanding, and growing.
Moni helps in providing mobile money agents with float, or available cash or in their digital wallet, which they can use to meet the needs of customers who want to withdraw money, send money to someone else and even pay their utility bills. These agents can also receive loans to meet the demands of their customers; these loans can be accessed through Moni Africa’s CoFi (Community Finance), which is powered by social trust.
The company also has an app with features such as Moni Wallets and Cluster Purse, through which you can access these loans among others, all in an effort to make money more accessible.
In the long run, the start-up plans to increase its community-finance model beyond mobile agents to a variety of SMEs throughout Africa.
