First Bank of Nigeria Limited (FBN) has said that its FirstMonie network, introduced to boost financial inclusion, presently processes over 5,000 customer transactions daily.

The bank’s Managing Director, Dr Adesola Adeduntan, disclosed this at the FBN’s agent banking national award ceremony.

Adeduntan said that the over 5,000 customer transactions that FirstMonie processed daily were in over 700 local government areas across the 36 states of the federation, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that FirstMonie is a mobile payment service that enables phone users to send and receive money, pay bills and buy airtime, among others with their mobile phones, without a bank account.

The mobile phone serves as the account number.

“FirstMonie has become a tool for driving the Federal Government’s financial inclusion and sustainable development goals in Nigeria as well as increasing our bank’s footprint and reach.

“As a result of FirstMonie agency network, First Bank has become one of the foremost financial inclusion providers, with over 37,000 agents in all states of the federation.

“We have effectively positioned financial inclusion as the core of our business strategy and through first money, we are successfully solving social challenges,” Adeduntan said.

The FBN boss added that the bank customers were offered convenient and affordable access to financial services as a result of which time, money and the risk of travelling long distances to bank branches had been saved.

Adeduntan said that the gap between the technologically-savvy and the low literacy clients had been breached through the FirstMonie agent network.

He said that the bank, through the network, had also been able to facilitate the entry of the unbanked and the under-banked population into the financial system. (NAN)