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In the light of the prevalent economic realities of the pandemic across the globe, and its huge impact and implications for financial services, top industry experts in the payments and financial services sector have proffered suggestions on practical strategies to accelerate growth and sustainability in digital payment adoption with a view to achieving a truly cashless society.
This was the key takeaway from the panellists comprising of top industry experts and business leaders at the recent Regtech Africa Roundtable – Dialogue with the theme: Money Re-imagined in Crisis: Did we just miss the opportunity to demonize cash?
The virtual event which was moderated by Cyril Okoroigwe (CEO, Regtech Africa) had topflight panellists that comprised of: Tunde Ogungbade (MD, Global Accelerex ), Dr. Yele Okeremi (CEO, Precise Financial Systems – PFS), Chioma Nkechika (MD/CEO Coralpay Limited), Manuel Mendonça P.hd (Payments expert, Forward Payment solution) and Musa Jimoh (Director, Payments System Management Department, CBN) who was ably represented by Akinwunmi Olubukola Akinniyi (Assistant Director, PSMD CBN.
While assessing the impact of the pandemic on digital adoption of financial services, the panellists provided broad perspectives for improvement and strategies to take advantage of the emerging opportunities on a sustainable basis.
In his keynote remarks, Musa Jimoh provided lots of insights on key policy implementation initiated by the CBN long before the pandemic with significantly socio-economic impact that laid the foundation for sustained growth of the National payment system.
While acknowledging the foresight of the apex bank in the initiation of the payment system vision 2020 in 2007 and the associated impact on both the Cashless policy initiated in 2012 and the BVN project launched in 2014, he highlighted the impacts of the BVN on electronic KYC and how it’s helped to empower and support fintechs to rapidly increase access to finance.
While canvassing for an innovative approach for automatic customer onboarding / channel migration process, Dr. Yele Okeremi highlighted Ubiquity of Data Communications Technology, Velocity of money, Propriety of payment, Cost of payment transaction and Agility of dispute resolution as key motivations for ease of payment.
“Ultimately, the world needs to move to transactions where the token of payment becomes who you are (biometrics), rather than having tokens that will expire in one form or the other”, said Dr. Yele Okeremi.
On his part, Tunde Ogungbade while speaking on the impact of the pandemic on digital adoption stressed that a new generation of Covid-19 Digital Converts (CDCs) have been born from the pandemic as the future face of consumers across different demographics.
“We have awoken a new generation of consumers and these are the people who are the last to turn the curve of adopting anything digital, not just in financial services but anything digital, and we need to get ready for them”, he said.
Sharing a slightly different view based on available statistics of 41m banked customers vis-à-vis the 97m mobile subscribers, Chioma Nkechika contends that the chain of events during the lockdown, especially as relates to the distribution of palliatives, revealed that there is a clear disconnect between the fiscal and monetary policies of the government, which clearly indicates a low performance.
“But if you look at the potential of the market where we have 97m mobile subscribers, you will clearly see that our work in terms of conversion for financial inclusion has not been very strategic. The responsibility we have therefore is to use these data to begin to chart a new path”, said Chioma Nkechika.
On his part, Manuel Mendonça P.hd was upbeat on the progress recorded and inferred that the pandemic provided the springboard to do more. He stated that the seemingly low progress could have only been possible due to huge investments in infrastructure over the years.
While sharing the experience of the pandemic in Portugal, he highlighted the different deliberate initiatives taken by the government to encourage remote distribution and digitization of payments and thereby reducing cash in circulation to include: further incentivization and lower tax regime on electronic payment transactions, increase in contactless limit from €20 to €50.
Musa Jimoh further reiterated the commitment of the apex bank in supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the loan to deposit ratio policy which is aimed at improving access to credit through the banking industry as ancillary initiatives in support of social financial inclusion.
The Regtech Africa Roundtable (RAR) provides a great platform for leading industry practitioners, tech innovators, serial entrepreneurs and regulators to share insights from an informed position on contemporary innovative regulatory issues to enhance effectiveness, innovation and growth.
© Regtech Africa 2020
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