State-Owned Giants Collaborate to Offer Expanded Loan Products

The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), the country’s largest commercial bank, has partnered with Ethio Telecom to introduce a new range of microloan and savings products on the widely-used mobile money platform telebirr

The partnership, announced today, June 27, 2023, at the Skylight Hotel in Addis Ababa, enhances telebirr’s existing loan offerings by adding new loan and savings products with fresh terms.

One of the new loan products introduced is the “10-Days Enderas,” which provides customers with a credit limit ranging from 100.00 to 4,000.00 ETB. This plan comes with a facilitation fee of 4%. Another offering is the “25-Days Enderas,” which offers a credit limit ranging from 100.00 to 10,000.00 ETB and has a facilitation fee of 9%.

Additionally, there is a “60-Days Enderas” plan that allows customers to borrow amounts ranging from 100.00 to 15,000.00 ETB, subject to a facilitation fee of 21%. Moreover, there are other loan products dubbed “Aderash” and “Dildiy” with a loan limit of 50,000 ETB. Aderash is tailored for individuals who receive their salaries through telebirr. Meanwhile, Dildiy is designed for SMEs.

All of these loan products will leverage the existing credit scores of users on telebirr to avail the loans.

In terms of savings products, CBE provides two options on telebirr: ordinary Sinq and locked Sinq. The ordinary Sinq service allows customers to deposit any amount starting from 1 ETB. However, to earn interest, which stand at 7%, customers need to deposit more than 26 ETB. On the other hand, for locked Sinq, customers must deposit a minimum of 20,000 ETB at a time.

Furthermore, customers who save for different periods, such as 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 12 months, will be eligible for interest rates of 7.25%, 7.5%, 7.75%, and 8% per annum, respectively.

This collaboration between Ethio Telecom and CBE follows Ethio Telecom’s previous partnership with Dashen Bank, which was established ten months ago to provide financial services through telebirr. Through this partnership with Dashen Bank, telebirr has been able to provide loans amounting to 3.9 billion birr to 2.3 million customers.

In its two years of operation, telebirr has amassed 34 million users, facilitating transactions totaling 746 billion birr.