Post bank begins operations in March – NIPOST

The Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) has said it will begin its super-agency banking operations throughout the country by March 2022.

Post-Master General of the Federation, Dr Ismail Adebayo Adewusi disclosed this at a press briefing in Abuja on Tuesday.

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“In 2019, it (NIPOST) secured the status of Super-Agent and International Money Transfer Operator (MTO) from the Central Bank of Nigeria. These licenses have enabled the organisation to go into collaboration with Fintech, FSP, NCS, IMTOs, and Remita with a view to developing an agnostic platform, set for roll out in the first quarter of 2022,” Adewusi told journalists.

The NIPOST boss said though the postal agency had been providing financial services for over five decades, it will now leverage on Information Technology to operate super agency banking.

He said NIPOST would continue to play a critical role through its vast spread of outlets across the country to achieve the financial inclusion strategy of the Federal Government to increase financial access points in Nigeria.

Adewusi said the Post Bank would provide a template for a “one stop shop”, where customers can go and have services such as withdrawals, deposits, transfers, international remittances, bill payments, insurance services and other forms of financial services to serve different segments of the population.

The NIPOST boss who listed some of the giant strides taken by him in his two-year reign at the top of the postal service said NIPOST would soon be Nigeria’s cash cow.

Some of NIPOST’s recent achievements, according to him, include Western Union Money Transfer, which commenced pilot operations in Lagos in 2020; reconciliation of account with Cameroon Post (Campost), culminating in the resumption of international remittance transactions which, in a short period, has accrued over 10,000,000 in revenue, and joining of Universal Postal Union (UPU) Clearing House, from which Nigeria had been removed, before, to facilitate the expansion of remittance transaction beyond the Cameroon Nigeria corridor, with the potential revenue increase.

Others, according to him, include rollout of co-branded credit/debit card with Data Mining, payment services partnership, with System Specs, which allows NIPOST to carry out bill payment using Remita on its counters, and promotion of NIPOST card for seamless IFS transactions with more UPU member countries.

He also said the African Development Bank (AFDB) had sought partnership with NIPOST to drive agricultural transformation in Africa’s economy with the Special Agro-Industrial processing Zones (SAPZ) initiative.