Nigeria: MTN Launches Mobile Money Transaction Service in Kano

Kano — A new service for transfer of funds approved by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) called Mobile Money transaction (MoMo) was yesterday launched at Dambatta in Kano by MTN.

Addressing reporters at the event, a Senior Manager at MTN Kano Office, Mr. Kumar Abubakar, explained that the system was aimed at easing the demands of their customers who seek to send money to their friends and relatives in any part of the country.

"People want to send money to their friends or relatives, but they find it difficult to do cash transaction. What they do is that they purchase credit cards and send it to them to sell to agents and get the money. Based on this, the Yellow Digital Financial Services, a subsidiary of MTN, came up with a new product which was licensed by the CBN to do cash transaction.

"It is such that if you have a brother in Lagos or Port Harcourt or anywhere in Nigeria, you can send cash to him through our MoMo agent. He can go to a MoMo agent nearest to him and collect cash without any charges. This is why we are here to sell this idea to the people in Danbatta," Kumar said.

He explained that the network's vast outreach with about 63 million subscribers in Nigeria and over four million in Kano would provide reliable financial transactions base that would ease the public need.

"We are leveraging on our customer base with clear-cut view that everywhere you go you will find our agent close to you and effect your transaction. We are planning to cover beyond the INEC's polling unit per community in order to have a wider reach for our transaction," he said.

He explained that MTN is targeting 50,000 people before the end of the year and that the telecommunication firm has 3000 agents so far in Kano.