Changing Lives
17
Fostering
entrepreneurship
The agent network has an important role to
play in the mobile money ecosystem. Mostly, it
is the men who run the mobile money agent
business but operators have slowly
recognized the benefit of hiring female agents.
Female agents are able to bond with female
customers in a better manner which helps to
increase the uptake of mobile money amongst
female customers. This is an important point
of consideration as the operator may operate
in a country where social norms may restrain
interaction between men and women. With
more female agents handling new
registrations these concerns are quickly
taken care of which helps to increase the
female customer base.
User Story: Somaliland
In Somaliland mobile money agents have to take photo of their customers at the
time of registration. With a significant Muslim population, most females in the
country wear niqāb and do not remove their veil in front of male agents. This
hindered uptake of mobile money amongst women. To overcome this barrier
Telesom ZAAD hired female staff to register new ZAAD female customers. This
proactive step, helped ZAAD to increase number of registered women subscribers
15
from 17% of the customer base in 2009 to 24% in 2010.