Somalia’s Premier Bank to bring ATMs, debit cards to Mogadishu

DUBAI (Reuters) – Somalia’s Premier Bank has struck a deal with Mastercard and will issue debit cards and install ATM machines in the capital of the war-ravaged country, the Islamic lender’s top executive said on Wednesday.

The east African nation has struggled for more than two decades with civil war and containing an insurrection by Islamist militants which has meant even basic infrastructure has been beyond most of the country’s 10 million people.

Yet with al Shabaab militants driven out of the capital Mogadishu and other major strongholds, business and consumer demand has grown for services which would be taken for granted in many other parts of the world, including banking.

“Somalia is a very under-penetrated market with less than 3 percent of its population banked,” Mahat Mohamed Ahmed, managing director of Premier Bank, which received a licence from the central bank last year, told Reuters in Dubai.

Carrying local currency in Somalia, a de facto dollarized economy, is cumbersome as $1 is worth 21,000 Somali shillings, and the only note in circulation is 1,000 shillings. For wealthier Somalis and visiting foreigners, carrying cash can be a dangerous task in cities rife with crime and awash with guns.

Ahmed said in an interview that the Islamic lender, one of a handful of banks in Somalia, will soon start distributing Mastercard-administered debit and prepaid cards to customers. It plans to have 15,000 cards issued by the end of 2015 and says its ATM machines will also accept cards issued abroad.

MasterCard’s spokeswoman for Africa said it had licensed Premier Bank to go live with their cards and machines.

Source:   Reuters