MOBILE MONEY PROVIDERS BEMOAN ARCHAIC COMPLAINT PROCEDURES

By Lumbiwe Mwanza

MOBILE network providers should ease complaint procedures for mobile money agents with the view to allow the sector to grow, the Mobile Money Business Association of Zambia has said.

Association Secretary General Chris Sinchende told The Scoop that the mobile money business sector had great potential to greatly expand but that some risks and factors from the mobile service providers continued limiting sector growth.

Mr. Sinchende explained that mobile network providers had imposed so many risks on the mobile money agents yet they were the major providers of the service.

He said that many times when an agent was either scammed or the agent made a wrong transaction and a complaint was taken to the mobile service provider, there was no form of urgency to have it addressed quickly.

“The mobile money business is a very lucrative business that the Government is also aware of. The only problem that still exists is that this sector faces a lot of risks; risks coming from scammers as well as those originating from the mobile service providers themselves.

“I can give an example of when an agent makes a wrong transaction involving a higher amount of money cross networks and it so happens that the transaction seems unsuccessful but monies have been deducted, when such a complaint is taken to the mobile service providers, no amount of urgency is given to have the issue resolved as quickly as possible to allow business to continue running. It takes too long to have such issues addressed and that means that the business is put on hold,” Mr. Sinchende complained.

He emphasized on the need for mobile service providers to ensure that complaints from mobile money agents were quickly resolved.

He further reminded the Local Authorities of the need to quickly find a designated trading place for the agents that were displaced.

He said that the demolition of booths early this year was on a promissory note that a designated place would be found but that to date, nothing has been done.

He said that without much effort being put in place to establish more favourable trading places for the sector, the sector would not have accelerated business growth.