Barclays Bank Catching up with Mobile Money

Barclays Bank Uganda has entered into a partnership with Airtel Money (Airtel) to enable the bank customers make bulk payments for services. According to James Kinyany, the acting Barclays Managing Director, the solution will save their corporate clients, NGOs and insurance companies from carrying huge amounts of money to pay their services providers. “The solution will make it easier for insurance companies to settle claims, cooperative societies to disburse loans to members, companies to make payments of cash prizes to winners for the various consumer promotions and projects to disburse various funds to aid recipients. All will now be processed in secure environments authorized by the known account signatories through the Barclays online banking platform Barclays Integrator,” Kinyany said This continues to confirm our belief that the future of banking is mobile, especially in a country with one of the highest mobile penetrations on the continent. The banks are catchup up and trying to re-evaluate their business models to be able to address convenience, and of course the best way is to partner with mobile network operators, rather than trying to build their own networks. The challenge is that this product is only focusing on existing customers and the banks need to think more innovatively on how to include the financially excluded.