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NIGERIA:Review mCash
The mCash – short for ‘microcash’, is an innovative mobile money payment solution designed by the Nigeria Interbank Settlement Scheme (NIBSS) in collaboration with four major telecommunications operators, Etisalat, MTN, Airtel and Globacom.
The mCash rides on Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) technology to enable merchants and customers conduct transactions instantaneously. In essence, it is suppose to provide some competition for variants like GTBank’s *737#
According to the mCash website, the epayment solution also leverages the NIBSS Instant Payments Infrastructure (NIP) for immediate fund delivery to merchants’ accounts.
Like many things government backed, there was some trepidation when this product was launched in 2016. Some people wondered what government wanted to achieve playing in the e-payment space instead of leaving it for the private sector to handle.
Nevertheless, the mCash appear to be managing fine on its own. It has also seen won support from a number of financial institutions such as Ecobank, Diamond bank and Fidelity bank which are currently using the platform provide payment services for their customers.
The deputy managing director, Ecobank Nigeria, Tony Okpanachi described mCash as the way to go, adding that apart from reducing use of cash, it will also be quite beneficial to the teeming bank customers and the economy.
Gbolahan Joshua, the Chief Operations and Information Officer (COIO) of Fidelity Bank also agrees that mCash will help deepen cashless policy by eliminating the need for cash and that the launch of the innovative payment services goes to show the power of collaboration in driving digital payment products.
There also merchants such Beatysouk, Academix.ng and many others who are coming on board the mCash platform. According to Iso Bassey, founder of Academix, “What mCash gives us is a single USSD code which our subscribers can use that works across multiple Nigerian banks.”
Customers who want to make payments through mCash, only need to dial *402* SellerCode*Amount#. Once the code is dialled, the name of the seller appears and a list of banks a customer wishes to make payments from. The user then selects a bank and input their bank mobile PIN to authenticate and complete the transaction.
Upon completion of the transaction, both the buyer and the seller will receive cash confirmation of debit and credit messages instantly. Only mobile numbers linked to a user’s BVN are allowed for mCash transactions.
SOURCE:BUSINESSDAY / FRANK ELEANYA
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