| Abstract: | Agent banking is a form of branchless banking which allows people to access bank
accounts, making deposit, withdraw, and transfer funds, pay their bills, inquire about an
account balance, or receive government benefits or a direct deposit from their employer.
Banking agents can be pharmacies, supermarkets, convenience stores, lottery outlets,
post offices and many more and retail outlets of merchants, by using a mobile phone
device. To this end, many more agent banking platform vendors have been emerged due
to the opportunities of the service and emerging of digital marketing, since it is found a
new and profitable business worldwide. Ethiopia has recently endeavored to launch
mobile and agent banking service through NBE under Directive No. FIS/01/2012. In this
regard, banks play a leading role in the adoption and implementation of the service.
Therefore, the purpose of this research is to assess the current practice, opportunities
and challenges of the agent banking service in Ethiopian banking sector. Thus, four
commercial banks were selected through purposive sampling based on the year they
commence and exercise agent banking service. The study adopted descriptive research
methods by utilizing survey approach form that the data obtained from primary and
secondary source through structured questionnaire and semi- structured interview from
the concerned respondents and the data was analyzed using SPSS software. Accordingly,
the finding confirms that, despite the significant progress registered, the implementation
and delivery of agent banking service in Ethiopian banking sector was unsatisfactory due
to lack of attention and support of banks, the level of managerial skills, financial
networks among banks, telecom network and internet access and awareness creation
among the society. It is recommended that banks should facilitate continuous training
and awareness creation, enhancement of telecom service and collaboration of institutions
to have a technological linkage among them |
