On Monday, 4, April 2016 Tigo Rwanda disbursed its quarterly interest payment to the over 18,000 users of the Tigo Sugira savings account. Tigo Sugira, launched in April 2015, is the first ever savings account on mobile in Rwanda. Tigo Sugira offers the best interest rates on the market when compared to commercial banks – 7% per annum. Since the launch, Tigo Sugira has paid over nine million francs in interest payments.
Tigo Rwanda Head of Mobile Financial Services, Faith Chisulo said: “We are proud of the progress we have made with Tigo Sugira since its launch. Our partnership with UOB bank advances two of our most important objectives: Firstly, to be at the forefront of digital innovation in the financial services industry and secondly, to advance technology as a means of making financial/banking services affordable and accessible to the masses.”
Since Tigo Sugira launch last year, we have processed over half a million individual transactions and accumulated savings deposits of over USD $1.5m. We continue to enhance the savings product to cater for our customer needs which include fixed savings for groups and individuals”, she added.
UOB Bank is the partner bank for the Tigo Sugira savings product.
There are presently over 3,000 transaction on Tigo Sugira on a daily basis.
Tigo customers can sign up and open the Tigo Sugira savings account (for free and within minutes) directly from their mobile by dialing *200*11# and selecting Tigo Sugira. All they need is a Tigo Cash account and a national ID. Customers can then instantly deposit and withdraw money from their savings account through Tigo Cash.
User of Tigo Sugira earn 7% interest per annum and the annual payment is broken down in quarterly payments of 1.75%.
Fils Sindambiwe, a 27 year old business owner in Nyamirambo commented: “I started saving because I had just started a small shop and needed to save so that I could scale up my business. No other institution has better rates. I will continue to save with Tigo.”
Growth of Mobile Financial Services
The take-up of mobile financial services on the Rwanda market , between December 2012 and December 2015, the number of mobile money accounts increased by 432% from 1,440,541 to 7,663,199, the number of transactions using mobile money increased by 659.8% from 22,191,674 to 168,612,455 and the number of agents increased by 1211.7% from 3,085 to 40,467 in the period under review.
This development is expected to have increased formal access to financial service between 2012 and 2015 more than what was achieved between 2008 and 2012.
(BNR). Four banks in Rwanda are fully integrated with Tigo Cash namely Access Bank, Bank of Kigali, KCB and GT Bank.
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