During a conference on the expansion of financial services, which took place in Luanda, the executive president of Banco Angolano de Investimento (BAI), Luís Lélis, also pointed out the "complex regulatory network" as one of the constraints.
Luís Lélis highlighted that there is a significant difference in costs between creating a branch and having just one banking agent that provides these services, highlighting that we should increasingly look at non-face-to-face banking, making the technological leap through digitalization.
The banker noted, however, that there are challenges in terms of network coverage in various parts of Angola, questioning "where is Angosat", an Angolan communications satellite, in orbit since 2022.
Among the difficulties he also highlighted the energy supply and communication routes, giving as an example the province of Uíge where the distance between two municipalities to load banknotes is 200 kilometers.
"We have to reflect on whether to continue with cash or move towards other means of payment", he suggested, also showing concern about financial illiteracy and illiteracy that lead to an increase in fraud.
Luis Lélis also clarified that, although it was the wishes of the banks, the current regulatory framework does not allow the use of the network of single customer service counters to provide financial services and criticized the malfunction of the so-called "green numbers", which allow free calls.
According to the head of BAI, the toll-free number that was made available to BAI after several years "does not work", forcing customers to bear the costs of calls.
The president of Emis (managing entity of the multicaixa network) referred to the growing number of transactions through this network, which grew 30 percent last year to a total of two billion transactions
"There are days when we have loads of 250 transactions per second", said José Gualberto de Matos, noting that ATMs (automated teller machines) have registered some slowdown in the last five years, but "they are not going to end anytime soon".
The president of Unitel, Miguel Geraldes addressed the growth of "mobile money" (electronic currency) in Angola, despite liquidity problems, stating that people will not stop using money: "We have to work in both directions, resolve liquidity and bring merchants [to this platform], the idea is that people don't make payments in cash", he indicated.
The national director of Telecommunications and Information Technologies, Matias Borges, highlighted that in other countries cell phones are increasingly used to make purchases and that the need to withdraw money from ATMs will disappear as the use of 'mobile money' increases.
