NCC, CBN sign MoU for MNOs to operate Payment Service Banks

Admin l Sunday, March 14, 2021

 

LAGOS, Nigeria – The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU)with the Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN)  to ensure that mobile money licenses  are issued to telecoms service providers to operate as Payment Service Bank.

Executive Vice Chairman, NCC, Professor Umar Garba Danbatta made the revelation as a Guest Lecturer at the 5^th Annual The Bullion Lecture, organised by the Centre for Financial Journalism.

Danbatta who was addressing the subject “Driving Pervasive Broadband Penetration to Deepen Digital Financial Inclusion for Nigeria’s Socio-economic Transformation”, said the need to allow telecoms operators to operate Payment Service Bank, PSB is based on the recognition of the fact that, since the MNOs own the over 204 million mobile subscribers – scattered in rural and urban settings- on their networks, allowing these operators to offer direct digital financial services to their customers would produce better financial inclusion traction.

“This has been witnessed in the case of the ‘Mpesa’ introduced by Safaricom in Kenya, which has made mobile money the most popular channel of carrying out financial transactions in the country with most Kenyans now financially included”, he said, adding that it is gratifying that the roll-out of nccPayment Service Banks guidelines that allows licensing of telco subsidiaries has become a welcome development and should be implemented.

The EVC explained that the Federal Government has set  a target of 20% financial exclusion or 80% inclusion by the year 2020 but that to achieve an accelerated financial inclusion target that the country desires, even as the population grows, technology and more importantly, broadband, has to play a massive significant role  which he said will actually democratize access.

“In doing this, the NCC embarked on various regulatory initiatives that have continued to increase access to telephone lines and improve access to high-speed Internet or broadband. This is in line with the Commission’s mandate of ensuring universal access to telecoms services in the country consistent with the ITU’s goal of achieving digital inclusion, globally.

“Foremost amongst these regulatory initiatives, is the implementation of the Open Access Model for infrastructure deployment through the competitively selected Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) called the InfraCo Project: The InfraCo initiative is expected to provide, at a minimum, broadband fibre and connectivity to every Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the Federation, totaling 774 fibre Points of Access (PoAs) with a minimum speed of 10Gbps which will translate to, at least, 38,296km of Optic Fibre Cable (OFC) to the Transmission over the next years”, he assured.

So far, the NCC, he said has licensed six of the seven InfraCos to implement this project  and that the presence of fibre point of access in each LGA will not only spur development, lower cost of entry for telcos and bring about innovative services and applications, but also, improve the conditions of living in the rural, urban and semi-urban areas, especially with respect to access to financial services.

The EVC said the InfraCo Project can be considered as the beginning of the “Next Level” journey towards achieving the 120,000km target of fibre connectivity set by the current administration.

Danbatta said the NCC has begun a process to strategically review the InfraCo framework and its funding options towards ensuring effective implementation of the national fibre project, adding when fully implemented, it will ensure robust and pervasive broadband infrastructure to drive availability, accessibility and affordability of financial services.