SmartCash, Airtel’s innovative payment service bank (PSB), has recently reported that it reached 1.5 million active users in March 2024.
This was disclosed in the parent’s company (Airtel Africa) financial first quarter (Q1) result, for the year ended March 31, 2024.
The company wrote,
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“During this year, we accelerated our customer acquisition strategy and our customer base is 1.5 million active customers. We continue to build the ecosystem to grow our transaction value”.
Airtel reported that the annualized transaction value for SmartCash PSB grew by 15% in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024 (Airtel’s financial year Q4) compared to the quarter ended December 2023.
It further noted that SmartCash added 39,000 agents during the quarter, reaching almost 205,000 agents as of March 31, 2024. Also, the mobile money customer base expanded to 38 million customers by the end of March across its operations in 14 African countries. This equated to SmartCash accounting for 4% of the Group’s mobile money customers.
Across Africa, Airtel said it would continue to leverage the low penetration of traditional banking services and the large number of unbanked customers to boost its mobile money business, whose needs can be largely fulfilled through mobile money services.
“We aim to drive the uptake of Airtel Money services in all our markets, harnessing the ability of our profitable mobile money business model to enhance financial inclusion in some of the most ‘unbanked’ populations in the world,” it said.
In 2022, Airtel Africa launched its payment service bank, SmartCash PSB to help further digitize the Nigerian economy and most importantly to help bank the unbanked by reaching millions of Nigerians who do not have access to financial services, by delivering payment and remittance services, debit and payment cards, amongst others.
Since the launch of SmartCash, the payment service bank has continued to record significant progress. In 2023, it hit 20 million accounts across Nigeria, which boosted its position as a major player in Nigeria’s digital banking landscape.
In October last year, the payment service partnered with Thunes, a cross-border payments infrastructure provider, to allow its customers to receive international remittances in Naira to their mobile wallets. According to the Managing Direcior of Smartcash PSB, Muyiwa Ebitanmi, he said through the partnership, the company can solve the problem of receiving funds from family and friends abroad.
Fast forward to January 2024, Smartcash announced a strategic partnership with Stanbic IBTC Bank which will focus on cash deposits and withdrawals for Smartcash customers across Nigeria. The collaboration between the two companies aims to leverage Stanbic IBIC Bank’s branch network to provide additional financial services to Artel SmartCash customers across Nigeria.
The primary purpose of SmartCash is to deepen financial inclusion, appropriating high-volume and low-value transactions in a safe, technology-driven environment. With its corporate headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria, its overarching objective is to ensure financial inclusion for everyone including persons in the furthest and remotest parts of Nigeria.