Airtel Ghana partners Fidelity Bank, Tiaxa to offer Nano loans for users

The loan will allow users to borrow money from a telco at a monthly interest rate of 20% or 240% per annum but the attempt to offer loan services to mobile users is considered as being contrary to the Central Banks E-money Issuers Guidelines, itwebafrica.com reports. 

The guidelines state that electronic money is only provided by (a) financial institutions regulated under the Banking Act, 2004 (Act 673); or (b) duly licenced non-bank entities which are engaged solely in the business of e-money and activities related or incidental to the business of e-money, and which are regulated and supervised by the Bank of Ghana.

According to the 2015 CGAP-funded Financial Inclusion Insights Survey in Ghana, one in five Ghanaians has a registered mobile money account though half of them also have a registered bank account. There are four mobile-money service providers – MTN Mobile Money, Airtel Money, Vodafone and Tigo Cash. Total value of mobile money transactions rose from USD 0.66 billion (GHS 2.6 billion) in 2013 to USD 9.11 billion (GHS 35.4 billion) in 2016, according to data from the central bank.