A final-year Software Engineering student of the American University of Nigeria (AUN), Mr. David Edijala, has launched an innovative new payment platform: “Zinger Wallet.” This app was created to address problems with payment methods in Nigeria, especially with cash, bank transfers, and POS machines.
“Zinger Wallet” allows businesses to receive payments in a reliable, quick, and cheap manner while providing easy management of staff, departments, and customers.
Currently, cash transfers require payments to be transferred to the bank, raising security issues and the possibility of human error. Bank transfers are inconvenient for medium and large businesses since someone is not always around to verify transactions, such as in large stores, and networks can fail, causing long delays. With POS machines, network problems arise, and cash is not always readily available.
Nigerian businesses need a better tool.
“Zinger Wallet” addresses all these problems. It gives customers an easy and innovative way of making payments and managing finances. It provides a speedy payment experience for both business owners and customers. Transactions are made securely by selecting the username of the person receiving the payment and scanning a QR code to complete the transaction.
David developed the app in January 2021 and presented it to the public at a colorful ceremony at AUN last week. It is now available to the American University of Nigeria community and will soon be available to many small businesses and shops in Yola. The app can be downloaded on Google Play Store and Apple Store.
Mr. Edijala confirmed that “Zinger Wallet” has already secured a partnership with Providus Bank while PayStack serves as a credit and debit card processor. “We are also partnering with different financial and tech services providers for bill payments,” he said.
AUN President Dr. Margee Ensign presided over the launch ceremony, at which Mr. Edijala reflected on his education at AUN.
AUN Honor Society student David, who minored in Economics while majoring in Software Engineering, credits the AUN liberal arts system for his innovation. “For me, it is all about the beauty of the liberal style of education from day one.
“From the moment we got into AUN, we were taught development, community service, leadership…everything about how to better our community, and think of ways to make things that are already working even better”, said the young innovator-entrepreneur.
“We learn entrepreneurship; we run businesses on campus. The AUN education broadens your mind, sharpens your skillsets, makes you see life and learning outcomes in a whole different light. There is always a different and fresh perspective from which to see life and approach problems whether with leadership, business, governance or social challenges.
“AUN education trains your mind to adapt to new skills and learning methods; you acquire a development life cycle from ideation to implementation, from problem identification to providing solutions.
“The learning and training process here at AUN allows you to deploy the resources around you to figure out what you can do differently. What we have done with “Zinger Wallet” is possible because of the nurturing we got from AUN from start to finish. We have been impacted in a lot of ways and launching this project here inside the University is our way of giving back to the community”.
