Advansio’s Fintech for Growth to foster collaboration in Nigeria’s tech industry

Financial technology is a driver of economic and business growth in Nigeria and it is against this backdrop that Advansio Interactive, a fintech company founded to develop cutting edge technology solutions organised a Fintech for Growth conference tagged ‘Bridging the Gap Between where Fintech is and where it Should be’ to foster collaboration within the Fintech industry and encourage more female fintech founders.

“Our focus as a business is to deliver technology platforms to drive ease of financial access. With fintech, we can make everyone have at least one bank account that they can use. Although technology is expensive, we are trying to ease the cost with our vision of being the preferred provider of sustainable digital financial solutions across Africa,” Olufisayo Oludare, Founder, Advansio, said.

The company in its commitment to encourage economic growth and development within Nigeria and Africa through financial technology, launched the Advansio startup Fund, a grant to support startups with the required fund to propel their business idea and growth with the female fintech founders in view.

“In addition to bringing people who are experienced in the industry to advise others, we noticed that female fintech founders find it hard to access funding. Our focus is to provide financial grants to one of such founders today and we do not expect anything back,” Oludare said.

Read also: Snapchat hits 1 million premium subscribers two months after launch

At the event, a female fintech startup, Regixta credit was awarded the sum of N1,000,000 in collaboration with Taj Bank of, its lead sponsor for the Advansio Fintech for Growth event. “Out of hundreds of applications that we received, Regixta Credit made it to the top 6 and won,” Oludare said.

Financial literacy being a part of financial inclusion, Advansio opens bank accounts for those in the underserved areas, teaches them the importance of bank accounts, and also provides credit to support their businesses.

In terms of synergy between the banks and fintechs, Oludare explained that the banks have seen that fintechs would not go away and the fintechs also know that they need the banks which has given rise to more collaboration. “The Nigerian economy is pretty large, and not one sector can serve it and it’s good that there are more collaborations as we can see.”

Similarly, the Companies and Allied Matter (CAMA) Act and the startup bill would be vital for the growth of the technology startups in the country.

“When we started Advansio, there were a lot of boxes of taxes to pay, some even existed that we didn’t know about and you get penalised, but overtime we did not stop doing what the law says. We were serving several banks and that required us to always pay our taxes to be in the government’s good books.

“However, things are getting better because in the last two years, there has been a lot of improvement and support from the government, the central bank of Nigeria (CBN), and other regulators,” Ikenna Agugua, Co-founder, Advansio, said.

The co-founders believe that although Nigeria’s fintech industry is growing at an exponential scale, there is still a lot more to be done and that is what they birthed the Fintech for Growth event which they are confident is here to stay and will be a launch for many startups looking to change, impact and influence the future of fintech in Nigeria and Africa.