How Errandpay is powering financial inclusion through Fintechs, MFBs and MFIs

Many financial organisations believe that Fintechs, Microfinance Banks (MFBs), and Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are seventh heavens in the global effort to alleviate poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, this impression is very far from reality.

Filtering through the World Bank’s 2021 report on Financial Inclusion, Digital Payments, and Resilience in the Age of COVID-19, one would find that over 65% of the region still has limited access to deposit and credit facilities provided by financial institutions.

Not only are these financial services essential to the growth of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs), they are integral to improving the money markets and fostering social development amongst individuals.

Fintechs, MFIs and MFBs require more technologically-driven solutions, proper bookkeeping and reporting mechanisms, clear credit policies and better internal controls to provide these life-altering services. Fortunately, Errandpay’s robust agency banking and mobile money models promise to enhance such solutions.

Errandpay is a fintech company operating across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda, providing financial services providers with agency banking applications and affordable point of sales (PoS) terminals, amongst other innovative products for processing real-time transactions.

The company’s agency banking solution is entirely white label and reduces major obstacles in go-to-market strategies banks experience. Banking stressors like recruiting and managing developers, setting and meeting timelines, projecting, collecting and aggregating vendors, negotiating with other banks, customer onboarding and documentation are eliminated. Time spent on these stressors is reduced from years, sometimes months, to days.

Agency banking, also known as branchless banking, usually allows banks to expand their branches, reach and customers by using authorised agents who can offer banking services like deposit and credit facilities using authorised PoS machines.

A more detailed description; Aliyu, a Hausa retailer in the North Eastern part of Nigeria, has been authorised to operate a PoS machine by a bank. Aliyu helps his family, neighbours, and friends send, receive and withdraw money using his PoS machine. Through Aliyu, the bank can reach more customers in indigenous areas. Aliyu can earn additional income from commissions from each transaction he processes on his PoS device.

As an agent, Aliyu is in the best position to help his bank make lending decisions because he is more familiar with his customers. He knows their repayment capacity, financial stability, credit ratings, etc. These insights can help his bank maintain its asset quality.

Errandpay is passionate about driving financial inclusion by ensuring its API can easily be integrated by any financial institution planning to leverage the platform to expedite its expansion plans across the continent.

In a recent chat with Errandpay’s Chief Technology Officer, CTO Paul Dureke, he explained that the platform helps facilitate the operations of other financial institutions.

“Building technology is difficult and time-consuming, so we have made developer-friendly and easy-to-integrate APIs readily available for all our partners. From white labelled services to aggregation of major services and an ability to integrate seamlessly to any core banking platform in Africa, Errandpay’s features are fully customisable to the needs of any potential partner. Fintechs, MFBs and MFIs can worry less about building technologies and focus more on strengthening their structures through the platform”.

Errandpay’s vision is to transform authorised agents into human MFBs. However, this dream can only be actualised through more partnerships.

“As we have rightly seen in the past 10 years across the Sub Saharan Africa region, the fintech revolution has been chiefly driven by collaboration. One of ErrandPay’s core strategies is collaborations with Microfinance banks, financial institutions, Aggregators, agents, fintech companies and lots more. We have built our technology for ambitious banks, organisations, Founders and CEOs looking to scale super fast,” stated Paul Dureke.

Since March 2022, Errandpay’s products have significantly improved many people's financial lives through its 15 special fintech partners across Africa. The platform can facilitate lending, insurance and investment products, credit card payments, registration for different services and so on, while its partners avoid additional charges for using the platform.  

Onboarding on Errandpay is free. The platform is accessible on the website and/or its app on iOS and Android devices, while its ever-supportive technical team can be reached at hello[at]errandpay[dot]com.

Abiola Bonuola, a Nigerian PR Consultant contributed to this report.