Tanzania: TWB to Team Up With Cellular Firm to Serve More Clients

Dar Es Salaam — The Tanzania Women's Bank (TWB) and Vodacom plan to start offering mobile banking services. "We are in talks with Vodacom and hope to roll out mobile banking services to the banked and unbanked segments of the society by November this year," TWB managing director Margaret Chacha told BusinessWeek.

Negotiations come at a time when the Bank of Tanzania is calling on lenders to expand their operations to rural and semi-urban areas. According to her, TWB is aimed at making its services easily accessible to customers. The bank does not expect profits from the venture during the first two years.
Sixteen per cent of Tanzanians have bank accounts and 18 million access mobile phone services.
Venturing with Vodacom's mobile money transfer service (M-Pesa), TWB hopes to reach more people. "Looking at the huge and diverse customer base of TWB, we have developed a solution which will work in our cooperation with the mobile operator and support various methods of communication," she noted.
Mobile phone users need to register and open accounts and then do transactions through their handsets in an easy and reliable way. They will not need to come to the bank; rather the bank will go to them.