By Ralph Sesay
Orange Sierra Leone financial service- Orange Money has remained a huge success story in the country’s drive to attain financial inclusion to its largely remote communities and people.
It is a fact that before the introduction of Orange Money, by Orange Sierra Leone transmitting money from one individual to another was a very huge challenge.
The challenge of establishing a complete banking facility in the country especially in remote areas was quite expensive in terms of the requisite infrastructure needed. Even with bigger towns and cities, the dynamics inherent in the traditional practice was increasingly scaring away people with very busy schedules to go to the bank and engage in valuable transactions.
In the Corporate Business the story remains the same as customers of various services such as electricity, water and payment of staff in remote areas was a problem. Business entities in particular such as Guma Valley Water Company were losing billions of Leones not because customers do not have the money to pay their bills but they were afraid to face the challenges confronting them when they venture to visit the customer service offices or the banks largely due to the delays and long queues in these areas.
Many of these challenges were immediately solved with the emergence of Orange Money in town.
Orange Sierra Leone has been able to spread the service with the recruitment of hundreds of Agents.
The system has being able to handle bills for Water, electricity and payment of salaries for fields workers working for NGOs and other international organizations as such bills and salaries can now be paid using Orange Money
The service was widely used at ease during the Ebola scourge that hit the sub region to pay risk allowances to essential workers in the fields.
The payment of these workers was a huge challenge for the response until when the Orange Money platform was introduced.
It was successfully utilized by the National Response to pay thousands of essential workers contributing more effectively to the fight.
The platform has also gained international acceptance from International NGOs, Agencies within the United Nations System and other credible organizations largely because it has the characteristic of leaving out trails for audit purposes.
It has been able to generate taxes for Government and also helped in the increasing need for increasing accessibility to finance as envisioned by President Bio’s New Direction Government.
This Direction is also in line with the World Bank’s and the Central Bank of Sierra Leone vision to improve on the accessibility to financial services for its people.
Acess to financial services according to a World Bank Research remains relatively low in the country with only 22% of Sierra Leoneans having access to financial services in the country.
Orange Sierra Leone is not oblivious of the fact that the facility is being increasingly exploited by criminals to cause/conduct fraudulent activities and this is why the management at Orange Sierra Leone especially the Orange Money team is increasingly updating the platform with a view to make it increasingly user friendly and also less susceptible to fraud.
The recent re-configuration of the platform was to continuously meet the huge demands and challenges inherent in using the platform.
Orange has consistently assured the public that they are closely keeping and maintaining electronic records of Orange Money transactions across eth country with a view to help the Sierra Leone Police and the general public as and when such demands arise so as to enable them to investigate and prosecute people who want to beat the system.
The recent ongoing sim registration is fully supported by Orange Sierra Leone and it is hoped that it will also help towards addressing the huge problem of people wanting to use the system to fraud decent and well meaning citizens.
But like it exists with other systems of such a financial nature, Orange money do has it problems but they are far less when takes into consideration the huge benefit the service has provided for businesses, employers, Government and subscribers.
It has even left a mark and contributed significantly to the quest by government to create employment for hundreds of youths by running a twenty four hours assured and uninterrupted.
Orange Money Remains a Success Story In Sierra Leone’s Financial Inclusion Drive
