The Social Impact of FinTech in Nigeria

by: Daniel Steeves

Twitter: @DanielSteeves

The global village that FinTech enables bring markets and consumers closer, supports new businesses and reduces reliance on the Government in the process. In emerging African economies where consumer and business banking are not commonplace, FinTech also contributes to improving personal safety: 95% of Nigerian consumer payments today are cash transactions where FinTech easily mitigates and minimises a broad set of risks.

Not only eliminating the risks of robberies, VoguePay is a Lagos (and London) based start-up that delivers secure mobile and online payment capabilities which also contributes to the national economy, supporting Central Bank policies to reduce the amount of cash in circulation (and cash handling costs) — limiting corruption, leakage and money laundering while increasing the effectiveness of monetary policies to manage inflation and encourage economic growth.

Other Benefits

FinTech start-ups enable businesses, ranging from market traders and shops through to importers, exporters and Forex traders, to improve their bottom-line with a secure, affordable platform to reach new markets and new customers, with multi-currency international payments (including Bitcoin).

Leveraging local presence and cultural knowledge and implementing strict anti-fraud mechanisms, this start-up enables a change in the mind set of Nigerians — and removes the traditional barriers to technology for thousands of businesses by providing training, hands-on support, pre-built shopping carts and website integrations — as well as the ability to collect and send money directly from mobile phones without the need for a website.

Also enabling business to start and to grow, sharing profits with developers and digital agencies and enabling non-technology start-ups to secure their transactions, their latest acquisition goes a step further with an eco-system that enables entrepreneurs to start new businesses with very low entry costs: another example of FinTech providing a positive impact to local and national economies.

Editors Notes: This entry has been submitted to the FINTECH Book, the world’s 1st globally crowd-sourced book on FINTECH. Readers that enjoyed this initial abstract are invited to share and like it so that it may be featured in a longer version.

The FINTECH Book is due to be released in April 2016 and is available for Pre-Order on Amazon.