AccessBank Tanzania: Introduction of Agency Banking and Mobile Banking; Digital Transformation


Under the management and technical assistance of LFS, AccessBank Tanzania (ABT) has embarked on an ambitious digitization journey since 2012 when the bank won a large grant from the MasterCard Foundation. As of today, the digitization agenda has become core to the strategy and the bank is currently adjusting its business and operating models to offer fully digital services by 2018. The bank focused initially on channels and started offering its MSME urban and rural clients mobile and agent banking solutions from 2015. The bank now facilitates more than 50,000 transactions and USD 4 million per month via mobile and more than 20,000 transactions and USD 5 million per month over its own agent network of 150 active agents. Via its mobile platform partner, the bank is also connected with all MNOs with over 150,000 agents offering additional services to its clients. Following the success of its alternative channels the bank introduced a digital bundle in May 2015: free current account with free mobile banking transactions (all incoming and outgoing transfers are free of charge). This was an immediate success and the bank opened more than 30,000 accounts and mobilized more than USD 3 million deposits in almost a year. Lately the bank launched a new service with a mobile group savings product in partnership with CARE. While LFS is currently working on more disruptive digital services for 2018 for the bank, it has also worked on internal processes to become more efficient and make use of new technologies (GPS coordinates, mobile data collection and account opening, credit scoring and semi-automated loans).