The $200B Distribution Channel You’re Not Designing For

What is an “agent,” really?

If you’ve been in payments long enough, you’ve likely heard of agent networks—but what exactly do they do?

At the most basic level, agents are the bridge between cash and digital money.

They are the kiosk operator in Lagos who helps a market trader cash-in her day’s takings, the corner shop in Johannesburg that handles utility bill payments, the phone shop in Abidjan that makes cross-border transfers possible.

• In Nigeria, there are over 1.6 million active mobile money agents, moving an estimated $200 billion annually in deposits, transfers, and withdrawals.
• In South Africa, over 70% of utility payments in low-income neighborhoods flow through spaza shops and retail agents, not bank branches.
• In Côte d’Ivoire, MTN and Orange agents process more transactions per day than the formal banking sector combined.

The logic is simple: banks and telcos can’t build branches everywhere.

Agents—whether corner shops, petrol stations, or airtime resellers—become the “last mile.”

But here’s the problem:

• The user experience is fractured—> Paper receipts, long queues, inconsistent pricing.
• The agent experience is precarious—> Cash shortages, no float visibility, slow reconciliation.
• The network owner’s economics are fragile—> Fraud, churn, high training costs.

The same is true in LATAM (OXXO in Mexico, bodegas in Peru, lottery shops in Brazil) and in SEA (7-Eleven agents for TrueMoney in Thailand, sari-sari stores in the Philippines).

In all these regions, agents are responsible for 50–80% of digital transaction volumes.

Which raises the core question: If agents are this critical, why do their experiences feel like an afterthought?

Lagos: The Economics of Confusion

On the streets of Lagos, an agent handles dozens of transactions daily: withdrawals, deposits, airtime, bill payments.

Margins are thin—often ₦50–₦100 (5–10 cents) per transaction.

Multiply that by 30–40 transactions per day, and you see why agents survive on $3–4 daily commissions.

Confusion at the kiosk is costly: a failed PIN entry, a missing float top-up, a dispute over a printed slip.

Each one is friction that makes digital feel riskier than cash.

In our redesign, we treated the kiosk like a payments cockpit—a place where:

• Float balances update in real-time (no more guesswork).
• Fewer errors in workflows reduced disputes by 40%.
• Agents can upsell services (insurance, micro-loans) transparently, lifting their income by 20–30%.

Incentive unlocked: when agents earn more, they stay loyal; when customers trust the process, volumes grow; when volumes grow, telcos and banks see higher transaction fees and lower churn.

Johannesburg: From Spaza Shop to Payments Hub

In Joburg’s townships, the spaza shop is more than a store—it’s a bank branch, airtime seller, and bill payment office rolled into one.

But the fragmentation is brutal: ten different providers, ten different apps, none optimized for low-bandwidth networks.

We simplified the interface into one consolidated flow—fast, low-data, offline-first.

The impact:

• Average transaction time cut from 3 minutes to under 45 seconds.
• Agent training costs down by 60%.
• Customer satisfaction up: “It just works.”

Incentive unlocked: for banks, this reduces operational drag; for fintechs, it creates a sticky distribution channel that can now carry any product—cross-border remittances, SME loans, merchant acquiring.

Abidjan: Making Payments Feel Premium

Abidjan francophone West Africa’s payments testbed.

Yet many agent kiosks feel improvised—rickety tables, hand-written signs, fading posters.

That environment communicates “informality,” which limits adoption among aspirational urban customers.

We flipped that script: redesigned kiosks with Baoulé-inspired geometric patterns, bright colors, and modular hardware that signals trust and modernity.

Customers began treating agent visits as a premium service interaction rather than a back-alley necessity.

The result?

• Transaction volumes up by 25% in test sites.
• Cross-sell uptake (airtime + bill pay + remittance in one visit) up by 35%.
• Fraud reports down—because confidence and transparency were built into the environment.

Incentive unlocked: agents look credible, customers feel safe, and telcos see higher throughput per kiosk.

LATAM and Southeast Asia (SEA)

This isn’t just an African story. Consider:

• Mexico’s OXXO stores process over 12 million payments daily, handling everything from Netflix bills to remittances. Yet even here, agents complain of thin margins, flat issues, and outdated terminals.
• Peru’s bodegas are the only “bank” many rural families ever see. Training them to handle loans or insurance could unlock billions in SME credit.
• Thailand’s 7-Eleven / TrueMoney partnership shows the scale: with over 13,000 outlets, they rival the largest banks in transaction volume.

The lesson is universal: wherever agent networks exist, the opportunity is enormous—but the UX is brittle.

The Strategic Truth

Across Lagos, Joburg, Abidjan, Mexico City, Lima, Bangkok, the same equation surfaces:

• Agents are the distribution backbone.
• Their experiences are broken.
• The opportunity in profit but also enbaling true financial inclusion is massive for those who design to serve first.

That’s where our work comes in: treating agent experience not as an afterthought, but as a system—digitally, physically, economically.

We’ve proven that when you align agent incentives, customer trust, and network economics, growth compounds.

Closing

The question to every telco, fintech, and bank executive is this:

If 70–80% of your volumes flow through agents, can you really afford to treat their experience as secondary?

Or is this the moment to license a global playbook—one built on years of fieldwork and designed to scale across Africa, LATAM, and SEA?

Get in touch today!