With an inbound flow of more than US$ 25 billion migrant remittances, Nigeria is the fifth largest remittance receiving country worldwide, and the largest one on the African continent. A large part of the flows stems from Europe, Russia, China, the GCC, and North America.
Remittance money is mainly delivered via bank branches which are present in Nigerian cities. To leverage the potential of Nigeria’s wide and rural network of post offices, the Nigerian Postal Service (Nipost) on Wednesday entered in a partnership with Eurogiro.
In a Press statement by the Nipost General Manager, Corporate Communication, Franklin Alao, Nipost’s CEO, Mr. Bisi Adegbuyi and Eurogiro’s CCO, Mr Dame Damevski, signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Amsterdam, at the UPU’s World CEO Forum, to cooperate in connecting Nipost to Posts and Postbanks in 50 countries around the globe through the international payments network of Eurogiro.
The cooperation is expected to evolve into a partnership that supports Nipost in becoming a licensed institution by the Central Bank of Nigeria to deliver migrants’ money sent via international money transfer operators and payment systems. To this end, Eurogiro will work with Nipost to implement and roll out its new supermarket solution.
The Eurogiro Financial Supermarket is the next-generation open payment platform that empowers postal organizations to actively engage in financial services and e-commerce, both locally and globally at a new unprecedented level.
The Postmaster-General of Nigeria expressed its satisfaction in entering into the partnership. “It is one agreement that covers a nearly universal solution for NiPost’s international payments; NiPost gets connected with 100,000s of post offices worldwide”, he said.
Mr. Damevski noted that he is proud to see NiPost joining Eurogiro. “Since the acquisition of Eurogiro by Danish Fintech Inpay, this is the first and big new member of Eurogiro; we are committed to building success in the partnership with NiPost and to continue in connecting more African Posts.”
The cooperation is expected to include training of staff, setting up payments technology and capacity building in managing the operation, ensuring compliance with the regulatory framework.
The initiative fits in the financial inclusion strategy of Nigeria and contributes to reducing time and cost for rural recipients of migrant remittances.