Africa’s payments scene has been defined by a constant influx of technologically advanced new solutions. While businesses changed the way they operated to keep up with trends around the world, some failed to adapt and lost market share due to a lack of innovation. Therefore, it is impossible to overestimate the value of technology and the necessity of innovation.
Payment is a vital human activity that has adapted to and developed with innovation. The demand for value-based exchange and payment has always arisen as a result of human interactions throughout history. As a result of the ongoing need for exchange, there has been an evolution of payment methods, including barter, coins, banknotes, checks, cards, and, more recently, digital payment.
The innovation surrounding digital payments is growing, and the Nigerian digital payment ecosystem is not exempt. In particular, the past two decades, with the introduction of technology-driven payment solutions by Interswitch, Africa’s integrated payment and digital commerce organization, which fundamentally altered how Nigerians interacted with cash and paid for products and services.
The technology firm introduced innovative solutions to improve payments and has since continued to develop additional solutions that are enhancing business growth and ensuring secure and seamless payment transactions to financial institutions, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), merchants, and their customers across the African continent.
Reiterating its positioning as the gateway to Africa’s payment ecosystem, the company recently hosted its customers and key stakeholders in regional breakfast sessions across Nigeria and in Sierra Leone, where it showcased nine new products and solutions with which their partners can accelerate the growth and profitability of their businesses.
Themed Accelerating Growth and Profitability – Leveraging Technology to Win, the discussions at the sessions centered on how the company’s stakeholders can leverage heightened technology solutions to unlock endless possibilities and drive growth. The partners were further engaged to share their pain points and their insights on the issues affecting the business and the industry.
“With the emergence of new technology across all sectors, particularly the payment sector, we see a need to provide even more solutions that are technology driven. For the past 20 years, we have carefully tailored our offerings through advanced technology to speak to the passion points of our customers. We believe with these sessions, we can provide expert guidance to businesses to enable them to thrive,” Akeem Lawal, managing director, Payment Processing and Switching, (Interswitch Purepay) said at one of the sessions.
The products introduced during the sessions include Mobile-Banking-as-a-Service (MBaaS), Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), Payment-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Interswitch Security-as-a- Solution, Interswitch Banking-as-a-Service (IBaaS), Fintech-in-a-box, Tokenization, and Biometrics on POS, and they were designed to address critical pain points of the business processes such as:
Payment
Payment is seen to be a critical aspect of any business, ranging from how customers check out at counters, and various payment channels during sales of goods and services, among others. One of the recently unveiled solutions known as Mobile-Banking-As-A-Service (MBAAS), helps businesses push the boundaries of financial services. With this solution, businesses can boast of ease and affordability in offering their customers mobile banking services, while saving time and the cost of building an app.
Similarly, with the use of an application programming interface (API), the Interswitch-Payment-As-A-Service solution is a flexible and scalable technology platform that enables businesses to easily integrate with existing/new systems to offer seamless payment experience to their customers.
Security
The security of customers’ data and funds is paramount in business sustainability. A secure payment platform drives confidence and a robust customer experience. To provide protection against fraud, an effective fraud prevention solution known as Interswitch Security as a Solution was introduced to the partners.
The solution is fitted with an anti-money laundering feature that spots suspicious activity, prioritizes alerts that direct business owners to the source. It also comes with payment fraud protection, card fraud protection, among others that create transparency in an organization’s financial flow.
Infrastructure
Interswitch’s technology and networks creates enabling infrastructure on which its products are designed. Financial industry players including banks, fintechs, and micro financial institutions, among others, leverage Interswitch’s robust infrastructure to provide services to their customers.
Interswitch Banking-as-a-Service (IBAAS) is one that eases the pains of banks and their customers by improving their experiences. The solution provides banks and other financial institutions with the technology to offer services such as loans, payments, deposits, withdrawals, among others, saving them the huge cost of investing on new infrastructure to support these services.
Consequently, Nigeria’s fintech and financial institutions’ growth is largely built on the reliability of Interswitch’s infrastructures which supports the numerous solutions that they offer their customers in Nigeria and Africa.
Customer experience
Customers will continue to seek easy, safe, and convenient solutions. They are constantly looking for solutions that provide intriguing experiences while they check out. That is why all Interswitch’s products have been carefully designed to give the end users incredible experience.
Amid evolving technology globally, and in a bid to keep the company on track with its aspirations of being the gateway to Africa’s payment ecosystem, making payment one less thing for Africans to worry about, Interswitch says it will continue to blaze the trail with its innovations, solving payments challenges, while collaborating with other key industry players to drive prosperity across Africa.