EcoBank’s Rapid Transfer (1)

By Dave Baro-Thomas

For a bank operating over 746 branches and offices in about 30 African countries, the capacity to drive a truly continental financial product should not be a problem.

In Fact, anything short of this would amount to operational inefficiency and management ineptitude on the part of those that run Ecobank. However, amidst its plethora of products, the Rapid Transfer offering appears to hold lots of prospects in the continental market.

A closer observation reveals that Ecobank’s Rapid Transfer seems to be breaking new ground across geographical boundaries and bringing families and friends closer throughout Africa.

For non-resident nationals scattered all over the African continent, Rapid Transfer, a well thought-out financial product, provides a platform for immigrants to remit money back home, to loved ones and friends. This is a product touted by the bank to be a fast, secure, convenient and reliable medium to transfer and receive money.

The Rapid Transfer product was primarily designed to provide a rapid payment solution for economic operators across the region with a view to facilitating economic integration.

Against this backdrop, the product will on the long run, seek to progressively capture and migrate regional transactions from the informal sector to the formal sector, thus signaling economic development and transformation.

Rapid Transfer comes in different dimensions but present a total package for the customers as transfers could be in the form of (i) Cash to Cash (ii) Cash to Account (iii) Account to Cash (iv) Account to Account and (v) Cash Pull.

The product is structured in such a way that it accommodates both account holders and walk-in customers. While customers of the bank could make transactions to the limit of N1.5 million per customer (equiv. to US$10, 000 at prevailing rate), walk-in customers i.e. Non-Account Holders have a limit of N500, 000 after presenting an acceptable identification i.e.

National Drivers License. However, both customers and non-account holders have a maximum of three transactions per week for each customer, and importantly, all transactions are done in the local currencies of the countries involved.

The beauty of the Rapid Transfer is that funds received are made available for payment in any Ecobank branch within a 5 minutes delivery period except in countries where remittance laws differ on this rule.

For a product that is available to all categories such as Workers, Parents/Guardians, Students, Individuals, Small businesses (predominant players in the informal sector), Traders, Churches and Organizations with large followers, spread across Africa, and Travelers within Africa, the Rapid Transfer offers lots of benefits.

From its primary core offering such as being a convenient, safe, reliable and rapid means of transferring money across Africa, the platform is a fast and secure means for fund remittance.

Also key is that, the Rapid Transfer financial product allows for funds to be sent in local currency while the receiver gets it in his/her local currency.

Thus, it completely eliminates the need to source for foreign currencies before a transfer is made.

In addition, since the product allows for account to account transactions, senders and receivers are saved the risk of carrying cash about, but it is worth the mention here that while full amount is delivered to receiver; the sender takes care of the charges.

Rapid Transfer is now available in Nigeria and is known as Domestic Rapid transfer offering unlimited frequency of transfers with a transaction limit of N500, 000.00 per transfer for both account holders and walk-in customers.

- Culled from: http://www.vanguardngr.com