‘We have helped reshape financial services delivery through technology, transaction simplification’

ENITAN KUTON is head of Marketing and Communications for Creditswitch, a firm committed to providing the best of Value Added Services (VAS) Aggregator services in the Telecom and IT industry space in Nigeria. KUTON in this interview shares the Company’s innovation strategies, operating environment and how it has sustained its growth plans amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Please give us an insight into what you do at Creditswitch Ltd.

Creditswitch is one of Nigeria’s most innovative value-added service companies. We’ve helped reshape financial services delivery through technology and transaction simplification.

Our business model, products, and solutions which include Airtime, data top-up, SMS, cable TV recharge, utility bill payments, USSD development, shared short codes and shortcode integration enables us as one of the most preferred VAS (Value added service) provider for various businesses within the country.

Furthermore, Creditswitch is committed to employee wellness, talent development, inclusive culture, and gender-balanced, with women accounting for 60 percent of the management team.

What would you say are your biggest constraints in delivering services to customers?

We are not immune to the growing uncertainties and fears for the survival of Nigerian businesses like any other industry and the many challenges it faces such as government policies, epileptic power supply, inaccessibility, and foreign exchange volatility. For instance, inadequate power supply has led to an overdependence on diesel. As you are aware, there has been a recurrent increase in the price of diesel, this has led to a surge in our operating expenses.

Dangerously, the national currency has been in a downward spiral, falling to a new low of N700 to US$1 in the parallel market last week, heightening fears of a further devaluation by the Central Bank of Nigeria. This makes it even more challenging for companies like ours to source foreign exchange for procuring business needs.

What differentiates you from other firms offering similar services, and how is yours unique?

Above all the system’s efficacy and platform robustness, we are proud to say that our clients and people are two of the most important variables in the success mix. We have created an ambience and a system that allows our people to focus primarily on client needs. Without this very capacity and understanding, prioritizing customer needs and satisfaction would be elusive for our talents to effectively fulfil.

The coronavirus pandemic has left in its wake a lot of disruptions in all areas of human endeavours, including your sector, even though there seems to be some level of easing now. How has this disruption impacted your areas of expertise within the industry?

The pandemic was a problem that affected the whole world and no organization had prepared for it. However, the outcome as we all know is still present. To stay in business, we needed to make a swift business decision.

As an innovative company, we recognized Nigerians’ need to be more reliant on technology and digital platforms for their daily needs, which is why we decided to put our best foot forward in relaunching our flagship product 931, a digital wallet-based service that allows users to pay bills, buy data, airtime, and subscribe to cable tv platforms.

This development enabled Nigerians to maintain the social distance required by the law to curb the spread of Covid-19 while our services are provided at a discounted rate so that they could cushion the effect of hardship

Many companies are taking their social responsibility seriously to maintain good relations with the public. What steps are you taking in this regard?

For us at Creditswitch, Corporate Social Responsibility entails more than giving cash and resource gifts to the indigent. We believe that it begins with us running the enterprise based on sound good corporate governance codes and ethics as captured in our corporate values and organizational principles.

Our CSR activities also goes a step further into taking the environment in which we operate into great consideration. This is the reason we have been involved in the corporate giving aspect of CSR for several years now. As an organization, we have set out to provide support to many social causes, big and small, and have consistently achieved this.

This year, to promote literacy and improve educational possibilities for incarcerated Nigerians, we sponsored inmates of the Lagos correctional service who expressed interest in enrolling in the Joint Matriculation Board Examination and donated laptops as well as other educational resources.

This move has not only proven but solidified our company’s stance on CSR, and we are proud of the results of our sponsored inmates. Their results were impressive with the highest score of 313, followed by 258 and 252 and thirteen others scoring 250 – 150. We are proud of these results and will continue working with the Nigerian government to provide support in any way that we can.