Ecobank is currently piloting a mobile money loan product in Rwanda, that offers up to US$5,000 collateral-free loan to small businesses, just on the back of the customer data with ECOBANK.
Senior Banker and Digital Transformation Specialist at Ecobank, Elhanan Owureku Asare disclosed this in his presentation during the Fintech Summit at the just-ended Mobile World Congress Africa 2023 in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.
The bank is working in partnership with FinTech OZE on this pilot, with the intent to roll it out across all of its 33 operations when the pilot is done.
Owureku Asare noted that banks have been accused of refusing to use data provided by telcos to provide access to financial services, but Ecobank’s XpressLoan facility in collaboration with MTN proves that assertion wrong.
According to him, based on customer data provided by MTN and analysed by Jumo to determine who qualified for loans, Ecobank has in the past four years disbursed over $600 million in microloans to some 3.2 million MTN customers through its XpressLoan product on the MTN Mobile Money platform in Ghana alone.
He said whereas the microloans in Ghana averaged just about US$35 per person, Ecobank is now pushing the boundaries further by piloting a product that provides up to US$5,000 on the mobile money platform to small businesses just by depending on the customers’ data provided by MTN.
He therefore debunked the claim the banks do not want to accept data provided by telcos as basis for providing financing to small businesses and individuals.
Catch the details in the video below:
