Lekan Akinjide, the partnership director at NowNow, a fast-growing fintech and digital banking platform, in this interview with BUNMI BAILEY expresses the company’s commitment to deepening financial inclusion in Nigeria’s rural and urban communities through innovative financial solutions and financial education.
Excerpts:
NowNow has a unique commitment to deepening financial inclusion through financial education and innovative payment solutions. Please explain this direction and the progress it has made towards this goal?
We are committed to contributing to Nigeria’s financial inclusion drive. We have a unique process to achieve this that we feel is progressive. We strongly believe that financial inclusion should be complemented by financial education.
In this regard, we recently partnered with a leading Nigerian educational institution with global recognition to provide financial literacy directly to Nigerians. Our initial offering will be focused on women before expanding to students and then to other sub-categories.
Our strategy to focus on women is informed by the statistics that women are among the most financially vulnerable groups and make up a greater percentage of the financially excluded in Nigeria
NowNow Digital Systems was founded in 2018. Can you tell us about the company’s product innovation since launching in Nigeria and the outlook for the future?
We are not just building a solid financial ecosystem for the underserved population neglected by traditional banking services, but also providing innovative financial services to a generation that is happy to perform financial transactions with Fintech solutions.
The NowNow mobile wallet enables users to make secure financial transactions like money transfers and bills payment with ease. Furthermore, our technology is agile and scalable, which allows us to adapt on the go. Soon, we will be introducing groundbreaking financial services and solutions to ease transactions for Nigerians.
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Your company has been recognized for several awards including the Best Mobile fintech Solution award in the Leaders in Fintech Awards. How would you describe the impact of NowNow in the financial technology ecosystem in Africa?
These award recognitions show that the company plays a positive role in deepening financial inclusion within Africa, but financial inclusion is only one facet of our objective. We are also aware that with only six percent fintech penetration, there is a lot more to do. For a start, we are expanding our services in Nigeria and other African countries.
What benefits in terms of products and services does NowNow bring to Nigerians looking to access seamless financial services?
Our product team has been developing numerous exciting products. Our Small and Medium Scale Enterprise and consumer products offer Nigerians simple and secure solutions alongside an expanded list of integrated third-party offerings, from simple bill payments to large retail entities. Behind all of this is a customer-centric focus with a 99 percent transaction success rate as one of our pillars of success.
Individual users on our platform can send and receive transfers, buy airtime and data recharge via their mobile phones, while small to large businesses can collect payments from customers using our platform. A core vertical of the NowNow ecosystem is the agent network. NowNow agents use the merchant app to offer access to financial services to customers with or without a bank account.
With stiff competition in Nigeria’s digital banking space, how does the company ensure that it stays ahead of the curve with innovation?
Over the initial years of our existence, our focus was on developing products in-house that the market would not only desire but also absorb with ease. Thanks to our product team, we have built innovative products that solve our user’s pain points and ensure fast, secure, and seamless payments and financial transactions.
You have recently been selected as one of the few startups in the world to join Mastercard’s Start Path program for the year. Can you tell us more about this?
NowNow is among the eight startups and is the only African startup selected to participate in this global program for the year. The Mastercard Start Path Global program is an award-winning startup engagement program within the Mastercard Developers portfolio that aims to support startups and aid them to scale technology solutions for the financial payments and services industries globally. Building the future of commerce, Mastercard Developers provide the services and tools fintech innovators need to iterate at each stage of their journey, transform bold ideas and achieve scale at pace to bring more people into the digital economy.
Through Start Path, Mastercard will provide us with operational support, commercial engagement, and the opportunity for strategic investment.
This program will no doubt provide us with support to co-create, gain expert knowledge, and reach a global customer base for the brightest startups in the world. At the core of it, we aim to deliver best in class financial services in Nigeria and Africa would surely benefit from the opportunity to collaborate with other innovative startups across the globe, to achieve that.
What should the public lookout for in the future from NowNow regarding financial solutions and digital banking services and products?
We aim to be a constantly evolving solution and service provider. We understand that our current product offering is what our consumers need to solve their financial payment challenges today. However, our technology allows us to adapt to the needs and wants of our market. Our goal is to be inclusive in our wide range of upcoming offerings.
How does NowNow ensure its business strategies and operations are aligned with the current business operating environment in Nigeria?
NowNow has always focused on operational efficiency since our inception. This enables us to build up a diverse portfolio of products and be the driver of meeting the demands of an incredibly diverse market like Nigeria.
How would you describe the future of banking and fintech in Africa with regard to emerging technologies?
Fintech isn’t the future, but the present. Change will always come, and we must be ready for it. With only 6% fintech penetration in Africa, NowNow is positioning its brand to lead in the African space. We will keep providing a range of solutions that will ease payments in Africa.
