At the GSMA-organized panel discussion titled ‘Driving Resilience and Safety in Mobile Money Ecosystem’ during the Mobile World Congress Africa, Aamir Ibrahim, CEO of Jazz, made robust commitments to improve women’s access to financial services.
“Out of JazzCash’s 17 million monthly active users, 27% are women. We aim to increase this to 50% in the next few years. The platform’s initial success amongst females is due to convenience. They are less likely to visit banks in Pakistan, while JazzCash provides them with easy, quick, and secure digital financial services from the comfort of their homes,” he added.
Another reason for JazzCash’s success has been the vast agent network spread throughout cities, towns, and rural localities; currently, the platform has close to 125,000 active agents in the country, Aamir added.
“Our vast footprint, especially in areas without brick-and-mortar banks, allows us to provide the underserved with basic financial services, onboarding new customers and educating millions on the benefits of mobile money,” he further said.
Expressing his desire to empower more females in this area, he said, “We are working to increase the number of female agents to at least 10 percent of the total agent network.”
“By inducting more female agents, we aim to foster a psychologically safe environment for females to transact conveniently. This will also open up new earning models for them as mobile money can be an attractive business for dedicated agents.”
Underscoring Jazz’s vision to improve the lives and livelihoods of females through technology, Aamir said that the digital operator is working on reducing entry barriers by making internet-enabled handsets more affordable, and launching digital literacy programs.
Addressing the affordability barrier to mobile phone ownership in Pakistan, Jazz was the first local mobile operator to offer 4G smart feature phones at very affordable prices. Jazz Digit 4G has also been recognized as a successful rollout globally by GSMA in expanding the benefits of mobile broadband, especially among low-income segments in Pakistan.
In response to a query about damages caused to critical digital infrastructure by recent floods in Pakistan, he said that the basis of all rehabilitation work relies on digital infrastructure built on telecommunications.
“Jazz also works with the government to find innovative and technological solutions to facilitate rehabilitation. Finding a mechanism that accurately, quickly, and securely distributes funds is crucial, and the role of mobile financial services is paramount in making this happen,” Aamir said.
Other panelists included Eric Duflos, Senior Financial Sector Specialist, CGAP; Cheryl Harrison, Deputy Director, Cash-Based Transfers, World Food Program; Tiemoko Keita, Group Head for Operations, Risk & Compliance, Airtel Money; Sammy M, Executive Head of Business Payments; M-PESA; and Max Cuvellier, Head of Mobile for Development, GSMA.
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JazzCash services are very unprofessional, inefficient and pathetic. Their customer service is unable to resolve a simple issue in months. Instead of resolving the matter by themselves they keep asking for the records. Its so stupid that you do transactions through their system but still they won’t have records and they continously keep asking for records and despite given records (screenshots & transactions IDs) they are still unable to resolve simple matters. Plus their app have so much glitches. I have taken out all the money from the JazzCash.