I&M bank and Mobikash are looking into making it big in the business of agency banking; this partnership will see the lenders customers deposit and withdraw money from the 500 mobile money transfer service agent’s network. In all this, MobiKash will be in charge of all its agents while I&M Bank will be the overseer of the whole business. This means that the bank will support the agents in all the regions through its branch network where they will maintain their floats in the Bank’s MobiKash trust account. The bank said on Wednesday that the partnership signifies its foray into agency banking under the brand “I&M KARIBU,” which, will be expanded to a large countrywide network of partner agents “in the next few months.” The partnership will enable I&M Bank customers will withdraw and deposit cash at MobiKash Agent outlets, send money from a MobiKash account to an I&M Bank account, as well as send money from an I&M Bank account to a MobiKash account. “We are glad to roll out our services at the MobiKash Agents outlets. We are now able to reach out to a much wider geographic spread of customers in both urban and rural centers without having to incur costs in brick and mortar branches,” said Arun Mathur, the I&M Bank Group CEO. I&M Bank Ltd plans to sign up more agents countrywide by mid this year, and will start rolling out agency banking in its Rwanda, Tanzania and Mauritius subsidiaries from the year 2016. “MobiKash agents offering I&M Bank Ltd’s financial services will not be expected to have multiple agency transaction accounts to serve MobiKash and I&M Bank Ltd’s transactions separately as it is currently in the market,” said Duncan Otieno, the MobiKash CEO.