By Juliet Umeh
Digital transfer of funds appears to be getting seamless especially with the instant credit alert introduced by one of the financial technology companies, Moniepoint Micro Finance Bank.
Nigerians had in the past few months suffered a lot of crisis in getting money across to one another when the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, introduced a new policy which limits withdrawals from the banks thereby resulting in a cashless economy.
Meanwhile, Moniepoint MFB has said that its innovative instant alert has been addressing some of the payment challenges in the country.
The Head of Partnerships at Moniepoint Inc Efemena Ogie, stated this at a Fintech Forum organized by the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters Association, NITRA in Lagos.
Ogie said this is helping businesses using Moniepoint’s POS machines to receive instant credit alerts when their customers make transfers to their accounts.
He also noted that this innovation has taken the customers’ burden of waiting for merchants to receive alerts before they can leave.
He said: “We had to think outside the box to make life easy when you want to make payments. If you go to a supermarket and you forget your card and you want to make a payment, you will have to make a transfer. But at some point, you have to wait until the merchant gets an alert before you can leave. You can just get angry at that point because your account has been debited.
He noted: “We saw that there is a better way to do that, so what we did was that instead of waiting when you do a transfer, the alert should just hit the POS, and that transaction will be seen as a card transaction and the merchant is able to print your receipt right there.”
Ogie added that more innovations are coming into the payment space in Nigeria, especially with the ongoing implementation of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Payment System Vision 2025.
“As we are talking, the CBN has also released the guidelines for open banking, so it’s not something that will happen in 10 years but it’s happening right now. The CBN has also released the circular for contactless payments.
“At Moniepoint, we are already working for our customers, we are already thinking outside the box to see how we can deploy services around these platforms,” Ogie said.
In his opening remarks at the Forum themed “Harnessing Nigeria’s Fintech Potentials: Challenges and Opportunities”, the Chairman of NITRA, Mr. Chike Onwuegbuchi noted that fintech has become the most exciting sector in the ICT industry, and in Nigeria as a whole. He added that the focus on the sector which is seen as the engine of financial dealings, economic growth, and transactional unification, was to present and aid various other sectors from the grassroots to international business/trade.
Bemigho Awala, PR Manager for MoniePoint Inc, used the forum to share perspectives around how opportunities in Nigeria’s fintech space can be robustly captured.
He cited the need for increased talent development in the industry while signposting Moniepoint NITHub initiative as an example.