“The Nigerian Postal Service, NIPOST is set to provide banking and financial transaction services to cater to the needs of the rural population and help realise the goal of financial inclusion for the “un-banked” rural masses receiving fees for service rendered to the banks and other financial entities. However, the challenge of adequate infrastructure and connectivity coupled with application of appropriate software is currently slowing down the scheme
For over a century, the Nigerian post offices, NIPOST, once remembered as most visible and popular face of the nation’s culture especially when the postman was the only person delivering mail and money orders personally at the doorstep of the people is presently gearing up to play more comprehensive role by reorienting itself to meet the expectations of future generations.
NIPOST pride itself as one of the biggest distribution channels in Nigeria with thousands post offices, especially in the rural communities with immense potential for the distribution of all kinds of products, including financial and money remittances.
Up till this day, it is still the oldest and prime source of money transfer for the city dwellers wanting to transfer pocket money to families back home serving as a source of financial stability to numerous homes.
Unlike traditional banks, whose high operational costs excludes non-profitable customers from the lower strata of society, NIPOST agents had a pre-existing relationship with local communities, allowing them to reach out to the rural population. Posts could be especially attractive partners for banks, as they offered a trustworthy and extensive network that was directly accessible to scattered rural communities.
Technology has, for better or worse, undeniably brought about a change, hitherto imagined, in our life styles. The transformation brought about by technology in the area of delivery of financial services has, thankfully, only been for the better.
According to a report, providing these services to developing world is a difficult task. Traditional postal money orders are overwhelmingly inconvenient with no flexibility to customers. The remittance of money order at present requires the person to visit the branch and fill money order form and then it is sent to the destination address either through physical delivery of money order forms or in the electronic form like e-MO (electronic money order or i-MO (Instant money order) buy utilizing the email and internet or other electronic media.
As the world moves towards a global economy, African countries need cannot be left behind in the provision of fast and prompt money remittances for creating efficient markets and sustainable economic relationships. Dealing with expanded realms of opportunity, the most successful financial activities will be those that find ways to best leverage cost effective technologies to harness the banking and postal networks to make a seamless network of financial products and services. As the economy interlinks and networks expand, it will be those entities that most efficiently transform, integrate and adopt the business models in such a way that economy and majority of people gets benefited.
Recent reports for BRIC countries reveal that the integration of the offer of financial services at some stage appears to be decisive if a Post is to play a leading role in access to finance in its country while simultaneously securing its future economic viability. A vast untapped market of almost two billion unbanked customers 1.1 billion of which already being users of non account-based postal financial services seems available for the post if it is ready and determined to seize the opportunities. These ambitions have much better prospects though if they are closely linked to financial inclusion policies at the government, central bank or financial regulatory authority level.
NIPOST as its fondly called began using IT with stand alone PCs and has recently migrated to Local Area Network (LAN) connectivity. Today, out of a 1000 post offices, several postal offices have been computerized and less than half of this figure have been networked through leased line based on the national broadband plan to enable Postal agencies offer services like electronic Money Order, e-payment and instant Money Order and it has plans to computerize and network all its post offices in the coming years.
Accordingly, a strong IT base will make it possible for NIPOST to offer a range of e-enabled services to customers such as:
Instant Money Order
An on line web based domestic money transmission service that enables customer to receive money in minutes from any of the post offices providing this service. Under this service, a person can send amount from N 1,000/- up to N.500, 000/- in one transaction instantly.
eMoney Order
The electronic money order facilitates transmission of ordinary money orders through electronic media without any extra charge.
E-Payment
E-Payment is a ‘Many to One’ service through which bills (telephone, electricity, municipal dues, taxes etc.) are paid by customers in Post offices which are then electronically consolidated and paid to the service provider.
According to the report, like the banks, the postal systems needs to harnesses the rapid IT and telecom capacity expansion to deliver three basic, integrated products to users of its services, such as a savings account hosted on a lightweight banking platform, a broad based payments network, and a competitive mechanism to deliver microloans to the poor.
As per the reforms towards computerization and networking of all the post officers spread across the country, it gives the opportunities for banks, financial institutions to utilize the existing setup and resources of post offices spread across the country to integrate the money remittance through cost effective means of technology.
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