Blantyre mobile money agents divided over participation of protest match against Airtel and TNM

The letter that Lilongwe District Council has granted approval to

* Some mobile money agents in Blantyre have expressed their unwillingness to participate

* Saying it would disrupt their business to waste away valuable hours of business at the demonstration

By Duncan Mlanjira

A demonstration march by mobile money agents has been planned in Lilongwe for Tuesday, November 14, in protest of the decision made in September last year by Airtel Malawi Plc and TNM Plc to revise the commissions they receive on every transaction that customers make.

Blantyre has also copied the initiative and cars mounted with PR systems are crisscrossing the City and its outskirts, wooing the general public to join the demonstration in solidarity with the mobile money agents.

But in random interviews, some mobile money agents in Blantyre have expressed their unwillingness to participate, saying it would disrupt their business to waste away valuable hours of business at the demonstration.

“In the first place, we just heard of the plans to demonstrate by the people in the cars with PA system,” said an agent in Ndirande, who asked not to be mentioned. “My peak hours of business are in the morning evening and I wouldn’t want to waste the morning hours over this.”

The demonstrations are expected to disrupt business, not just for Airtel of TNM, but customers as well if all agents were to close shop to attend to the march.

Lilongwe District Commissioner granted some five representatives of the disgruntled mobile money agents, whose names upended to the letter seeking permission to hold the sit in and protest against Airtel Money and TNM Mpamba, has been signed by Lazarus Nguluwe, Knox Msowoya, Nokia Khanganya, Hastings Banda and Stain Banda.

They are operating under the banner of ‘Voice of Agents & Concerned Agents’, saying they are bitter with the companies’ decision last year to reduce their commissions.

The leaders claim that Airtel and TNM reduced the commissions without consulting them by just sending messages when all the changes were already made.

They further said they tried to engage the two companies through their supervisors but were told that the decision would not be reconsidered.

However, impeccable sources at both mobile money service providers, who also asked not to be name as the issue has not been addressed to them, said the agents were engaged when they were revising the commissions last year and that “they were fully aligned”.

“Unfortunately, they have never been to our offices nor to our counterparts’ for discussions,” said one of them. “What we gather from the ground is that there are a few agents who are not happy with the commissions they are forcing their friends to stop trading.”

According to the agents we contacted, they indicated that they get 0.8% from the fee that a customer is charged when they send money and 1.1% for cashing out.

They also indicated that by month end they make around K500,000 or even K1 million, especially those that do both Airtel Money and Mpamba.

“For example, if you were to cash out K10,000, the commission I would get from the fee that you have been charged as a customer is K110. To accumulate more earnings, it’s all about having good traffic per day.

“Those that are propagating this are agents with small capital and they want to influence everyone else. I wouldn’t be doing this business if I was not breaking even of the capital I injected into this business.

“Mind you, a lot of these agents are employed by owners of the licence to operate. It means their employers have to give them the nod to stop business and attend to the demonstration,” said the agent.

Apart from operating Airtel Money and TNM Mpamba services, other agents also hold licences to operate on behalf of Mukuru, NBS Bank, National Bank of Malawi, FDH Bank and other platforms.

In an interview with the media, one of the signees to the letter seeking permission to demonstrate, Lazarus Nguluwe claims that they involved Malawi Communication Regulatory Authority (MACRA), Competition & Fair Trade Commission (CFTC) and the Reserve Bank of Malawi, who suggested that there should be a meeting of all parties — but he alleges that both Airtel and TNM did not show up.

He also claims that they met some officials of one of the two mobile money companies on November 22 last year but nothing changed, but the top official of the service providers we contacted, declined to comment further.

When approached, a customer whom we do not name, said he was surprised that the agents were wooing the general populace to leave their businesses unattended to in order to join them in solidarity.

“This doesn’t make sense at all and it is a recipe for trouble in the streets as some bad elements of the public may take advantage to create some disorder.

“They just need to be organised and press both Airtel and TNM to a decent dialogue and if they have failed to do so, they must engage others as they alluded to in the messages that they contacted MACRA, CFTC and the Reserve Bank.

“In fact, is I were to join a protest over mobile money services, I would be enticed if the aim is to reduce the charges we pay in sending and cashing out — which obviously would negatively affect the agents’ commissions,” he argued.