Agency Banking for Minors – By Samuel Abel Okwir of Luzira secondary school
A student article submitted as participation in the 2018 Schools’ Financial Inclusion Challenge.
| First Name: | Okwir |
| Last Name: | Samuel Abel |
| Phone: | |
| Gender Identification: | Male |
| Age: | 15-18 |
| SchoolName: | Luzira secondary school |
| Class: | Senior 3 |
| Topic Entered: | 6. How do digital financial services enable children empowerment? |
| Essay/Poem: | HOW AGENCY BANKING CAN BE EXTENDED TO THE MINORS.Research has shown that agency banking is popular used by people in urban areas and rarely used by people in rural areas due to a number of factors but extended to minors in varies ways. Agency banking is a system were commercial banks appoints an agent to transact business on its behalf.the agent would be a supper market,petrol station name it.the owner of the business is the responsible to conduct banking transactions on behalf of the bank.Agency banking banking has been with us since the advent of mobile money agents when MTN Uganda had first introduced the service in 2009.With the system,a customer can engage in depositing money into their accounts,withdraw and send money,bay bills as well as access other financial services like credits. However ,agency banking can be extended to the minors in a number of ways and this bases on the economy and statistics of the county.As it is well known that rural areas don’t benefit a lot from this system ,agents should be deployed in such areas in order to give services of agency banking t the minor people.this can be down by putting 2 or more agents in a trading center In order to reduce matters of traveling by the minors.This has been proved by the survey indicating that about 9.3 million adults travel over an hour to reach the nearest bank branches ,therefore agency banking can brought in to create flexibility towards the customers transactions. Many minors are of the opinion of what they under stand than the opinion of what they don’t,so the minors must be taught by the agency companies on how to operate with agents ,benefits of agency banking and other issues concerning the system which will bring a right understanding to the minors on the system.so this will favor about three quarters of people in villages to begin transacting with agency banking. As the 2017 demand and supply side survey for agency banking,a survey commission by financial sector deepening Uganda conducted by micro save,indicates that about 58% Ugandans’ adults are unbanked .Therefore recrution of agents should be done in order to give the right know ledge about the business which make the transactions easy thus favoring the minors.It should be put in the financial inclusion by the government in order to give all minors a chance of easy transactions regardless of their income levels. Factors such as increase of mobile money tax should be minimized to favor all the the minors,the has been proved the amount transacted through mobile money was over 32 trillion in 2015 and this was because of the low taxes that was imposed ,but recently the tax was increased which will lead to the decrease in the number of minors using the system. I am of opinion that agency banking can be extended to the minors majorly through government support ,this can be though supporting promotions organised by the companies which will lead to favoring of the minors transactions. |