TotalEnergies, partners InTouch, others in taking open banking to service stations

The energy major was planning to offload its 10 percent interest in a firm that holds 20 onshore and shallow water permits in Nigeria

TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria Plc in conjunction with InTouch and other partners, has deployed a mobile payment solution called ‘Touch Point’ across its 385 stations to enhance financial inclusion in rural areas across Nigeria.

With Touch Point, TotalEnergies offers to capture the banked and unbanked populations in rural, sub-urban and urban communities nationwide including Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano, and Kaduna.

There are currently five (5) service bouquets being offered at the stations including airtime, data, bills payment, cash desposit and withdrawals.

TotalEnergies journey as a company has, over the years, evolved beyond a fuelling station to a solutions provider and hence, this value-added service offering, the company said in a release.

It said the partnership is in furtherance of its efforts to offer convenience to customers and live up to its commitment of being a one-stop service station where customers can access various goods and services across the country.

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“Touch Point” offers our customers, convenience, a 7-day accessibility to a variety of services and a brand name that is trusted, the company said.

In view of the growing need for the integration of banks and other financial institutions with innovators and customers in the financial services space and the increasing adoption of Application Programming Interface (“API”) based integration in the industry, TotalEnergies has partnered with organizations from different sectors of the economy to provide Touch Point.

Although financial inclusion has recorded growth over the years in Nigeria, there is still more to be done to reach the unbanked population as current spread of financial offers, still leaves parts of the country uncovered.

According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), only 51 percent have any form of interaction with financial services. The CBN, in a bid to provide an enabling environment which allows for customer-focused innovative financial services, issued the Regulatory Framework for Open Banking in Nigeria.

Open banking is a banking practice that provides third-party financial service, open access to consumer banking, transaction, and other financial data from banks and non-bank financial institutions using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Isaac Anyaogu

Isaac Anyaogu is an Assistant editor and head of the energy and environment desk. He is an award-winning journalist who has written hundreds of reports on Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, energy and environmental policies, regulation and climate change impacts in Africa. He was part of a journalist team that investigated lead acid pollution by an Indian recycler in Nigeria and won the international prize - Fetisov Journalism award in 2020. Mr Anyaogu joined BusinessDay in January 2016 as a multimedia content producer on the energy desk and rose to head the desk in October 2020 after several ground breaking stories and multiple award wining stories. His reporting covers start-ups, companies and markets, financing and regulatory policies in the power sector, oil and gas, renewable energy and environmental sectors He has covered the Niger Delta crises, and corruption in NIgeria’s petroleum product imports. He left the Audit and Consulting firm, OR&C Consultants in 2015 after three years to write for BusinessDay and his background working with financial statements, audit reports and tax consulting assignments significantly benefited his reporting. Mr Anyaogu studied mass communications and Media Studies and has attended several training programmes in Ghana, South Africa and the United States

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