Mobile Money helped contain spread of coronavirus – MTN

The Senior Commercial Manager in charge of South-East Zone of MTN Ghana, Peter Obimpeh has asserted that the high penetration of MTN Mobile money helped the country contain the spread of Coronavirus during the height of the pandemic.

Ghana’s situation of the pandemic is well under control compared to other countries. As of December 24, 2020, Ghana had 933 active cases of COVID-19 and a total of 333 deaths recorded.

According to the Senior Commercial Manager of MTN, mobile money facilitated financial transactions in the digital space reducing movement of people from one point to the other which could have increased the risks of exposure.

He said MTN has learnt a lot of lessons from the pandemic informing injection of new ideas into its digital transaction platform to make it robust.

“If you notice many of the information that were sent around for us to do a lot more digital activities and of course mobile money played a key role in that today even around the COVID era without necessarily going to an agent point you could easily withdraw money unto your wallet and be able to transact activity across so that is how similar the service is and within that difficult moment many people are able to sit comfortably in the comfort of their home and be able to transact activity without necessarily visiting an agent point ”

“But I must also say that in terms of what role the agents also play their presence within the various communities was also very key that you don’t need to also travel longer a distance to be able to access some of these services. So I think it played a role and we’ve also learnt a lot in terms of how we can make it more robust for such eventualities."

He said this in Koforidua at the 2020 Eastern Regional Momo Award ceremony held to honour over 55 Agents, Merchants and foot soldiers who distinguished themselves during the year under review.

The overall best winners of the three major categories received Motorbikes and other souvenirs while others received Flat Screen Television set each with citation of honour.

“It is an award ceremony to recognize our valued agents and merchants who have tirelessly work throughout the year, we commenced this in 2014 and so since the inception of this award we’ve so far rewarded over 5000 agents and merchants and so we see this year equally as no exception where we need to ensure that all the hard work that our agents and merchants have put together we adequately reward them so today we’ve come over to do a regional award”.

Mobile Money Implementation Manager, Faisal Ali said mobile money agents are being insured by MTN in addition to enhanced collaboration with security agencies.

He, however, urged mobile money agents to observe basic security protocols to keep safe.