MATS reaches Ten MobileMoney landmark agreements for agency rollout in Nigeria

SEPT 01,2014.

ABUJA - NIGERIA - Merchant and agent transactions services Ltd has signed ten landmark agreements and actively integrating them for agency transactions in Nigeria. The firm is deploying own proprietary software, point of transaction kiosks and staffed agency network  to serve licensed providers in Nigeria.

In a bid to bridge the gap with the unbanked population in Nigeria, give banked customers more transactional options to access agency network leveraging on  mobile financial services of the licensed providers in Nigeria, MATS  LTD               (Merchant and Agent transactions services Ltd )  is actively aggregating licensed providers of mobile money in Nigeria to enable subscribers  transact from any of the operator platforms via any channel  at MATS agent outlets which is in active roll out Nation wide.

The firm had successfully signed up and integrated  ten  licensed Mobile Money providers in Nigeria, the largest of such initiative in entire West and Central Africa. The initiative will enable  licensed operators lower their operational cost, accelerate roll out and the expansion of of mobile financial services as well as agency banking.

MATS has built a next generation aggregated platform that can handle and process subscriber requests from all the licensed partnering financial institutions and mobile money operators to access their agency network for transnational purposes. The agency network which is in active roll out will be combined with own network  and partner locations in collaboration with  leading distribution networks, they will be manned by trained MATS certified and branded agents nationwide .

The firm has signed  agency agreements with FETS, VCash, Teasy mobile,clicknpay, Readycash, Paga, eTranzact, Fortis MobileMoney , Heritage Bank for agent aggregation and agency banking. The firm  is expected to complete agreement signing processes with licensed providers in coming weeks.

Speaking about this novel  initiative, Emmanuel Okoegwale, Director at  MATS, "We have been working on the project in the last two years and had witnessed the painpoints of the licensed providers in terms of agent network churn, acquisition cost and monitoring . We have taken all these into consideration to offer this next Generation platform which comes along with the staffed agency network to serve licensed providers in Nigeria to further deepen the financial inclusion aspirations of the Central Bank of Nigeria."

MATS is powered by technology from Alterna, a subsidiary of Swifta Systems. Alterna has built and deployed next generation agent service aggregation platform to support MATS initiatives. The technology behind MATS is a convergent system that aggregates mobile financial services  from multiple payments schemes across heterogeneous systems – providing convenient and secured channels for mobile financial services covering agency, merchant and other associated transactions.

Leveraging on the strong footprints of Swifta in some of the leading and pioneer mobile financial services frontier markets in Africa, Alterna has successful deployed, robust and highly scalable enterprise financial service aggregation platform in partnership with leading mobile network operators and financial institutions across Africa.

According to Victor Asemota, CEO of Swifta systems,"We have seen all around Africa the gap in getting Mobile Financial Services initiatives to reach scale. We decided to solve this problem by helping put in place  a collaborative marketplace platform that not only provides the consumer all alternatives and choice but also strengthens the brand of each operator by helping them reach scale faster on shared infrastructure."  

Commenting on the innovative model, Musa Ali Baba, CEO at teasy Mobile, one of the licensed partners of the MATS scheme,  said  “We at Teasy are delighted to partner with MATS. We have worked closely together from inception of the project and are pleased that it has come towards fruition; wherein our customers and the general public shall benefit from the agent access, convenience, interoperability and consistency of service that we all need to make Mobile Money work for Nigeria.”

The organization is in active discussions and concluding with leading international remittance firms, utilities providers and value chain enterprises to use the agency network to make low cost banking and payment more efficient nationwide. The innovative model will enable providers accelerate and deepen adoption  of mobile financial services across Nigeria while MATS will focus on the agency network roll out.

************* MATS  CONTACT*************************************
Emmanuel  Okoegwale
Director, Business Development
+234-812-4379-950
Emmanuel@mats.ng
www.mats.ng
 
************* ALTERNA /SWIFTA  CONTACT***********************************
HENRY DAVID
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
 +23321771000
hdavid@swifta.com
www.swfita.com