Banking gets bigger

A sample of Gateway's new French "banking" print advertising material.

While many of the world’s largest banks face their toughest times, African banks are moving closer to the 230 million unbanked households in Africa’s rural areas through advanced satellite technologies. For example, Gateway works with 22 of Nigeria’s 25 largest banks, enabling secure and reliable connectivity services in metropolitan and rural areas where banks were previously unable to operate.

Using Gateway’s satellite and wireless technology a central office can now communicate instantly with branches in rural locations, rolling out electronic services, sending and receiving information in real time. A combination of wireless, fiber and satellite delivers high speed connectivity to branches across cities and remote locations, meaning they can be online instantly.

The better connectivity that banks have, the further they can move into rural areas to reach previously untapped and under-served customers. We’re seeing increased demand from the banking and finance sector with organisations looking to increase their footprint and demanding more bandwidth to carry secure and reliable voice and data applications.

Gateway’s unique knowledge of the banking and finance sector and the communications infrastructure in Africa has given us a real advantage. We are the only company in Africa able to rapidly deploy solutions at such high speeds with capacity, combined with the security and reliability required in the banking sector.

With this new rural satellite connectivity, banks can now reach more of the 75% of Africa’s population without a bank account, with ATMs, electronic payments, mobile phone banking and electronic transfers.

In addition to the benefits to new customers, an efficient payments system can help generate cost savings equivalent to 1% GDP, according to Visa International, due to lower cash handling costs, increased transparency and higher volume of cash in banks and increased tax revenue.