By Maria Tembo

Ntchisi, November 29, 2024, Mana: People in Ntchisi say they are impressed with the digital financial services being implemented by the government across the country.

The remarks were made during a monitoring tour at Malomo trading center to appreciate a digital financial services campaign which the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs in collaboration with the Reserve Bank of Malawi is conducting in the district.

Rose Maseko, a business woman at Malomo trading center said digital financial services will help small business operators secure their money as most of them barely use the services due to among others lack of knowledge on digital financial services.

She thanked government for the initiative and hoped for the service to help in boosting people’s businesses.

"We are living in an era of technology and I believe that the use of digital financial services will help us to easily buy and sell products as it is easy, reliable and fast," she said.

Maseko however expressed concern over poor mobile network connectivity and long distances covered to access banking services saying these will discourage people from using digital financial services.

"People in most parts of the district fail to access mobile money transactions due to poor network connectivity and most of these areas do not have banks nor bank agents. We are asking for these two challenges to be addressed so that we can be able to access the digital financial services without any challenges," Maseko explained.

On his part, Digital Financial Services Specialist in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs Steve M'gwadila said it was encouraging to see that Ntchisi residents have shown interest in adopting the use of digital financial services.

He said time has come for people to utilize the use of digital financial services as it will not only protect them from theft cases but will also help the country by reducing money that is lost when replacing damaged bank notes.

He said: "we are impressed with the feedback we have received in Ntchisi and we believe that a lot of people will put the information learnt from the campaign to use."

The 20 days’ awareness campaign is being implemented with funding from the African Development Bank Group (AFDB).