Ecobank
Introduction
Founded in 1985, the Ecobank originally called the ETI (Ecobank Transnational Inc) is one of the biggest financial services providers in Africa. The ETI has offices in 36 countries and is the leading independent regional banking group in Central and West Africa. On top of that, ETI has offices outside Africa, in Paris, London, Dubai, and Beijing. ETI’s total assets account for $25.9 billion and the biggest shareholders are the Nedbank Group Limited and the Qatar National Bank that have around 20% ownership. Ecobank employs over 14 thousand employees and serves over 28 million customers with wholesale, retail, investment, and transactional banking services.
Operations
ETI’ has three areas of operation, consumer, commercial and corporate + investment banking. The consumer banking branch’s purpose is to offer deposits, loans and payment products to individuals living in Central and West Africa. On the other hand, the commercial banking core objective is to support local businesses and entrepreneurs in Africa. ETI truly believes that African small and medium-size businesses lack a corporate governance structure and need experts to contribute to their financial success. Lastly, ETI’s third branch, corporate and investment banking, operates with clientele across sub-Saharan countries and beyond. The main objective is to drive Intra-African trade via providing effective working capital management and banking solutions to their clients in various markets and in multiple currencies.
Strategy
During the year 2020, ETI has been at the center of major developments like their first partnership with China’s Alipay that will enable Rapidtransfer, cross border remittance solution, and a unified payment ecosystem. ETI is dedicated to being at the forefront of trade, payments, remittances, and financial inclusion by continually leveraging technology and appropriate partnerships.
A major challenge for ETI is to enhance IT systems by upgrading their in-built application program interface (API) to expand their scope of operation in Central and West Africa.
ETI also wants to participate in local investment by lending to African micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in hand with the African Union’s AUDA-NEPAD ‘100,000 MSMEs by 2021’ program.
The implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area on the 1st of January 2021 will have a considerable impact on trade finance, payments, and investments. ETI’s expectation is to focus on a country-by-country strategy to widen their geographic footprint, scale their product offering, and lower the cost to access their digital ecosystem.
Digitalization
ETI's vision is to switch from traditional banking to digital banking. The race to reach a big part of the African population is rough and ETI has already set up a wide digital offering:
Ecobank Mobile - 11 million registered, $3.3 billion processed
Xpress Point - 66,000 agents registered, $1.5 billion processed
Ecobank Pay - 182,426 merchants, $59 million processed
Rapidtransfer - 13,000 registered customers, $2.2 million of transaction volumes processed
Omni Plus - 27,500 customers, with a transaction volume growth of $27.7 billion
Omni Lite - 122,631 customers, up 83% year-on-year, $3.6 billion processed transaction volumes
Going forward to upgrade their API, ETI has heavily invested in technology. Going from transaction, transfer, QR code, and account management, these new features enable ETI to be one of the biggest competitors in the African digital banking expansion.
Why KiwiGo
Ecobank is one of KiwiGo most trusted partners for many reasons, but one of the most important is that KiwiGo will soon be one of the biggest superapp in Africa and Ecobank needs Fintech actors to shift from traditional to digital banking. Like many banks in Africa, ETI’s objective is to help local economies and participate in the banking sector digitalization. Therefore, our partnership will help bring technologies and services that improve lives and create new opportunities.
