Africa’s largest Bank, Access Bank Plc has announced the launch of a payment platform called AccessAfrica barely few weeks that Nigeria signed the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCfta).
AccessAfrica is aimed at simplifying payments in Africa. It is a money transfer product which allow Access Bank customers and non customers engage in cross border transfers.
AccessAfrica is available in branch and via the Access Bank mobile. Non Access Bank account holders can also benefit from this platform by visiting any of the 600 branches in Nigeria and subsidiaries either using local currency or USD.
Part of Access Bank’s 5 year strategy is creating a Universal Payments Gateway to dominate international trade and inter-African payments.
The traditional payment services have not kept pace with the economic and technological shifts in this industry as the payment model still operates under a correspondent banking relationship.
More than 80% of transactions sent from Africa to the US have their final beneficiary in other regions. The three main region where these payments will eventually be transferred to are Asia Pacific (42%);Africa (I7% ) and Non Euro Zone (10%) .
It then means these payments had no business leaving the shores of Africa in the first place only to clear in the US and come back to Africa . It becomes more expensive, payments slows down and one cannot predict the final amount the beneficiary will receive. AccessAfrica addresses these challenges by providing a cheap, convenient and fast option of making payments within and outside Africa.
Customers in Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, Rwanda, Zambia, DRC and Sierra Leone can immediately take advantage of this fantastic new AccessAfrica service by downloading the Access Bank Mobile App, or walking into any Access Bank Branch to get started.