A few days ago, I was asked what I thought would be the next big thing in Nigerian Fin-Tech space in 2018, and in all honesty, these are a few areas (in no particular order) I believe would see a lot of activities.
- Financial Inclusion
The CBN and NCC recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding allowing Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) set up special purpose vehicles that would be able to offer Mobile Money services to customers thereby laying the foundation for a Safaricom styled mPesa to greatly flourish alongside the rapid expansion and adoption of the NIBSS mCash service(*wink* MTN)
2. Open Banking API
“Open Banking is a financial services term as part of financial technology that refers to the use of Open APIs that enable third party developers to build applications and services around the financial institution…” — Wikipedia
The Nigerian Payment industry saw a “boom” with the commercial success of the likes of Paystack, Flutterwave and Amplify, and it only makes sense that the next step would be for Nigerian Banks to find out how they can simplify the integration process between themselves and third party providers, with the likes of GTBank leading the pack. To find out more about Open Banking in Nigeria, you can reach out to the good folks at Open Banking Nigeria.
Segun Adeyemi also makes a compelling case on why Banks should adopt Open Banking in Nigeria.
3. Micro Non-Collateralize Lending
Imagine a product marriage between between Tayo Oviosu’s Paga, Chijioke Dozie’s Paylater and NIBSS mCash service targeted strictly at the low end spectrum of the consumer market (i.e the Market Women, Okada & Keke drivers etc), whom are basically the “everyday” users of Paga vast Agency Banking network, that is not restricted to just one mobile network like 9Mobile’s KwikCash.
We would have a mPesa styled mobile lending service that avails micro credit to the over 100million mobile network subscribers.
4. Offline Payments (POS & mPOS)
According to NIBSS the the total volume of POS transactions processed in Nov 2017 stood at over NGN135Billion ($373million), with total transactions for the year standing at over NGN1Trillion ($2Billion)! Did I hear you shout “wetin people dey buy sef?”
In August 2017, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji’s Flutterwave debuted the Rave Digital POS (RavePOS) at the Jollof Festival put together by Eat.Drink.Lagos. Even though they have been quiet about it since then, I believe we would hear more from not only them, but also other FinTech players as well.
All in all, it would be an exciting year for the Nigerian Fin-Tech industry and I honestly can’t wait for 2018.
