Open Banking Nigeria, an initiative designed to enhance and improve banking experience, officially debuts with opportunity for banks to grow more revenue from additional transactions powered by open banking and driven by Fintechs.
The concept of Open Banking has been gathering waves over the years but reached a watershed with the pronouncement of the PSD2. Beyond Europe, countries such as Australia, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, and Nigeria are at various stages of review, design or implementation of Open Banking.
Open Banking brings immense benefits to customers, banks and Fintechs. It would provide customers with innovative products such as single view banking apps, power services such as robo-advisory. Banks would see more revenue from additional transactions powered by open banking and driven by Fintechs. The transformation that Open Banking would bring to the financial industry would be more impactful than the ATM and interbank transfer as it frees banks and Fintechs to expand their sphere of innovation tremendously.
In his opening remarks at the official launch of Open Banking, Adedejo Olowe, Trustee Open Banking Nigeria, described the advent of Open Banking to the emergence of ATMs in Nigeria where all the banks came together and decided to adopt a single standard.
He explained that they went as far as contributing into creating a shared platform in Interswitch. Consequently, for the first time, customers could visit any bank ATM and withdraw cash, transfer money and buy airtime, amongst other transactions they could do, without thinking if the terminal belongs to their bank or not. “Banks have subsequently worked together to standardize on POS, NUBAN accounts, BVN, watch-list, among others.
Among the panellists who spoke at the event are Ladi Asuni, Associate Director at KPMG (Moderator), Tobi Boshoro, Divisional Head of Ebanking, Stanbic IBTC, Ayowole Popoola, Group Head, Operational and IT Risk Management, Fidelity Bank Plc and Akin Sawyerr, Director, Kinexus Limited.
They agreed that the benefits of open banking far outweigh its downside as it helps to drive financial inclusion, makes transaction seamless and cheaper.
Opeyemi Ndukwe, Management Consultant, Blue Advisory, during her keynote presentation described the current challenges and opportunities within the financial industry and how collaboration and partnership will help take the industry to the Promised Land.
Open Banking Nigeria initiative is being driven by a group of banking and fintech industry veterans committed to the expansion of innovation within the Nigerian financial space under the umbrella of Open Technology Foundation, a not-for-profit, non-partisan group in partnership with eMaginations, Flutterwave, Teamapt, 2i Lab, Kinexus, Wallet and Paystack.
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