Mrs Bunmi Lawson, a Director at Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EfinA) organisation, has urged the Federal Government to create a more enabling environment for growth of Financial Technology (FinTech) in the country.
Lawson gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Monday.
She noted that government could create an enabling environment by investing more in infrastructure.
EFInA is funded by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
She said that EFInA is a development organisation that promotes financial inclusion in the country and aimed at becoming the leader in facilitating the emergence of an all-inclusive and growth-promoting financial system.
She noted that FinTech was one of the fastest growing innovations in terms of investment size and the capital that had been coming into the country.
Lawson said that the organisation adopted a holistic approach to impact the market at three levels which are: micro-meso-macro levels.
Evolutionary economics is in terms of micro–meso–macro. Micro refers to the individual carriers of rules and the systems they organise and macro consists of the population structure of systems of meso.
“We urge the government to encourage investments in infrastructure by making sure that Nigeria has enough fibre optic, broadband access, improved internet quality and speed for FinTechs.
“I think Nigeria ranks one of the top three destinations for FinTech investments which is very close to South Africa and Kenya in Africa.
“KPMG did a study on FinTech investment and highlighted that Nigeria has attracted a lot of capital and investments in terms of financial technology.
“Given our population size and urbanisation and also the fact that we have a very youthful population, it is certain that FinTech would continue to grow if the government invests more in the sector,’’ she said.
Lawson advised the Federal Government and governments at all levels to start using financial technology system for all forms of business transactions.
“Citizens should be encouraged to do all forms of payments online including registering of a new company.
“Although the government had started with remittal, more of such innovations should be done by the government,’’ she said.
The director said that most financial technologies had issues with accessing funds.
“Therefore, while the cost of traditional things like renting apartment and getting equipment are done, one needs to be able to reach millions of customers.
“As a start-up FinTech company, to do that in a short time, you will need to invest in technology upfront which is one challenge on its own.
“Access to internet and constant power supply are other major challenges. If these things are readily available, FinTech will grow extensively,’’ Lawson said.
She said that EfinA is currently doing something to curb some of the challenges faced by start-up companies in that space.
Lawson said that EfinA in partnership with the UK government created a FinTech Challenge Fund with two million dollars where start-up companies and existing ones can actually send in proposals to get such grants.
She said that regarding the issue of cyber fraud, FinTech is a technology that is used for financial services and of course most of it is digital, hence it is vulnerable to attacks.
Lawson, however, said that most Fintech companies had firewalls, security, build in software that checked suspicious transactions.
“I do not think that Nigeria has FinTech frauds that are higher than any other country. Also regulators have put in place proper regulation and most tech organisations have security software to prevent cyber fraud.
“I believe most times we have cyber fraud it is as a result of customers carelessness with their pin or security password.
“So there is need for customer education in terms of keeping their pins and passwords and also setting up security codes, ‘’ she said. (NAN)
