Business / Companies
CABS launches rural mobile banking service
20 Dec 2010 at 12:22hrs | Views
FINANCIAL services provider CABS Holdings has launched a mobile banking service that will specifically cater for rural communities.
This emerged at the launch of the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund Zimbabwe Window round two, whose role is to bankroll the establishment of new agri-business in the country.
The mobile banking service will largely function to facilitate cash transactions for rural-based businesses across the country.
A CABS official said the mobile banking service, which will utilise mobile telephony, will help in minimising risks for agri-business with respect to money transactions in the rural areas.
"Many agri-business projects involve the movement of large sums of money to and from rural areas which carries with it inherent risk.
"These risks will be mitigated to a great extent by the success of the CABS financial services project that is primarily a cellphone- based, mobile money, banking service focused on rural areas," he said.
In terms of operational structures for the mobile banking system, the bank has said that at least 300 Point of Sale agencies will be created across the maize-growing belt of Zimbabwe.
According to indications from AECF's Zimbabwe representative, Mr Harvey Leared, the majority of agri-business projects that were funded in round one have made proposals to link their projects to the new mobile financial service. This will help in the provision of inputs on credit, movement of money between the businesses and easy payment of farmers for their produce among other services.
"The potential for synergy between the CABS project and almost all the other nine businesses in the AECF ZW portfolio is considerable and most have indicated that they intend to link their projects to the CABS mobile banking service," he said.
Although cellphone network coverage is still limited in some parts of the country, CABS has said that it will side-step this problem by entering the remote areas using the VSAT technology allowing their rural clients to transact until network coverage becomes readily available.
The VSAT technology has been successfully tested by one of the AECF-funded input supply and marketing business projects in round one, Produtrade.
This emerged at the launch of the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund Zimbabwe Window round two, whose role is to bankroll the establishment of new agri-business in the country.
The mobile banking service will largely function to facilitate cash transactions for rural-based businesses across the country.
A CABS official said the mobile banking service, which will utilise mobile telephony, will help in minimising risks for agri-business with respect to money transactions in the rural areas.
"Many agri-business projects involve the movement of large sums of money to and from rural areas which carries with it inherent risk.
"These risks will be mitigated to a great extent by the success of the CABS financial services project that is primarily a cellphone- based, mobile money, banking service focused on rural areas," he said.
In terms of operational structures for the mobile banking system, the bank has said that at least 300 Point of Sale agencies will be created across the maize-growing belt of Zimbabwe.
According to indications from AECF's Zimbabwe representative, Mr Harvey Leared, the majority of agri-business projects that were funded in round one have made proposals to link their projects to the new mobile financial service. This will help in the provision of inputs on credit, movement of money between the businesses and easy payment of farmers for their produce among other services.
"The potential for synergy between the CABS project and almost all the other nine businesses in the AECF ZW portfolio is considerable and most have indicated that they intend to link their projects to the CABS mobile banking service," he said.
Although cellphone network coverage is still limited in some parts of the country, CABS has said that it will side-step this problem by entering the remote areas using the VSAT technology allowing their rural clients to transact until network coverage becomes readily available.
The VSAT technology has been successfully tested by one of the AECF-funded input supply and marketing business projects in round one, Produtrade.
Source - Ziana
