As a pioneer telecom service provider in Africa, Ethio telecom has been serving the nation for more than 128 years. It has come long way in upgrading its infrastructure, introducing and deploying latest technologies to improve its services and boost customer experience. Furthermore, Ethio telecom has been striving to broaden its business horizon eyeing the digital finance as areas of big potential and made substantial investment to cater under served and unserved segment of the society. Accordingly, Mobile Money business under the brand name ‘telebirr’ was launched in May 11, 2021 aiming to deliver the best mobile money solutions to our valued customers and the entire community, with major focus and greater efforts to provide financial services to low-income citizens and rural people who do not have access to banking services. The 14 months old telebirr, surpassing the industry trend, acquired a subscriber base of 22 Million within a short period, with a total transaction value over 32 Billion birr. Moreover, through its integration with international money transfer operators in 37 countries, total remitted amount is around One Million USD. More than 55 service providing organizations have integrated their payment system with telebirr among which are Ethiopian Airlines, Ethiopian Electric Utility, Water & Sewerage Services of various towns, Ministry of Transport & Logistics, Traffic Management Agency, Immigration and Vital Services Agency, Addis Ababa Revenues Authority.Telebirr expanding its horizon of service now launches its economically impactful digital financial services: Micro loan, Overdraft and Micro saving services in partnership with Dashen Bank as per the permit given by the National Bank of Ethiopia with letter reference number FIS/PSSD/218/2022 dated August 01, 2022.
Dashen bank is among the pioneer and leading private banks in Ethiopia serving the nation for the past 25 years with the introduction of new banking technologies. It’s been playing a leading role in banking industry by connecting its branches using ICT solutions, implementing electronic payment systems, introducing mobile, internet and digital money transfers and enabling paper less transactions. Dashen Bank is also a leader in working with international Remittance service providers.
Due to goal alignment between the two companies, they have entered in to agreement to provide easy and convenient digital financial services to the financially underserved and unserved segment of the society using modern technologies.
Accordingly, our company in partnership with Dashen Bank offers three types of financial services namely telebirr mela (micro credit) a service that allows individual customers, agents and merchants to borrow money for any transaction or withdrawal and telebirr Endekise (credit pay/overdraft service) a service that enables customers to borrow money when they are short of balance in their telebirr account while making transaction and telebirr sanduq (Micro Saving service) a saving service which is available with interest free and interest rate based micro saving services. The services can be easily accessed via telebirr App and USSD (*127#).
telebirr digital financial services is unique in availing both micro loan and overdraft services without the need for collaterals. Creditworthiness of the customer and the amount of credit is determined by AI enabled credit scoring system which takes into account the telecom usage and telebirr transactions made by the customer.
Ethio telecom targeted to serve more than 12.8 Million unique customers within first year of operation with total transaction volume of 108 Million and transaction value of Birr 19.5 Billion.
The telebirr digital financial services play a significant role in the overall transformation and improvement of our society and will bring significant economic advantages in addition to ensuring inclusion and access to financial services to the wider community, particularly for those sections of the society who have no or limited access to formal financial services to get micro credit, overdraft/credit pay service and micro saving service through telebirr digital payment system.
Furthermore, telebirr financial services would play a remarkable role in bringing unbanked sections of our society into the formal financial sector, thereby enabling them to access low-cost credit and savings services.
The Launching of telebirr digital financial services, which is expected to have paramount effect in ensuring economic inclusion of the wider community, reinforces our company’s commitment and contribution to the realization of digital Ethiopia. Our company will step up its effort to bring new technologies and services that have wide range impact on our society.
Ethio telecom
August 5, 2022