To support the growth of digital financial services in West Africa, IFC announced a partnership with Orange Bank Africa (OBA) to increase access to finance for agents and merchants operating in the mobile money ecosystem .
Under this partnership, IFC will provide advisory services to Orange Bank Africa to help mobile banking develop and test innovative and scalable digital lending products that meet the specific needs of mobile money agents as well as merchants accepting this type of payment.
These solutions will first be deployed in Côte d’Ivoire, where Orange Bank Africa launched its commercial activities in July 2020.
In its pilot phase, the project will target 250 agents of the Orange Money Côte d’Ivoire network to increase their access to financing via Orange Money and enable them to have sufficient liquidity to meet the demands of their customers.
Agents are essential to the mobile money ecosystem in West Africa. But these entrepreneurs, mostly underbanked, face liquidity problems that sometimes force them to refuse transactions, hampering the development of their businesses and the sector as a whole.
Born of a partnership between the Orange group and the banking and insurance group NSIA Banque, Orange Bank Africa is the first digital bank to be approved as a commercial bank by the Central Bank of East African States. West (BCEAO).