Some bank tellers don't understand mobile money

Posted by Felix Okoli on Tuesday September 17, 2013 at 8:34:44:

I've been used to depositing money into my mobile money account at a particular branch. However, due to some circumstances, I found myself at a different place and I wanted to kill 2 birds with one stone. I chose to go to this different branch of the same bank and gave the teller my cash and filled deposit teller.

Paying money into your mobile money account basically involves filling a bank teller with your mobile phone number an the amount you want to pay and your account will be credited.

Funny enough, he looked at me as if I came from another planet. He then proceeded to ask his colleague something in secret. Afterwards, he came back to me and told me I had to fill another form. The form he gave me was a funds transfer form to my mobile money account. Funny enough, I didn't have any account with the bank and told him I'm paying cash into my wallet an don't need to fill the form. Anyway, I just filled form form for his own sake and told him I just want to credit my account.

I won't really blame the bank teller because he probably doesn't process such transactions on a daily basis. I guess mobile money has not penetrated well enough into our society and there are not many people already subscribing to it.

What Mobile money helps me to do is basically pay my bills conveniently. Bills such as cable tv, airtime top up, PHCN meter token, internet service and so on can all be paid with mobile money. There are no charges for buying airtime top up but others attract about 100 convenience fee. All these you can do from your home or office with your mobile phone as long as there is money in your mobile money account.