The partnership, which is a response to the rapidly evolving and expanding demands of the DRC market, will enable Multipay Congo to leverage Interswitch’s technology and expertise to deliver innovative and secure digital payment solutions to the Congolese market, supporting financial inclusion, driving digital transformation, and boosting economic growth in the country.

Multipay Congo is a pioneer financial technology company that launched the first local interbank payment service in the DRC in 2015, called “Multipay”, in collaboration with four major banks, namely: the BCDC (Banque Commerciale du Congo), Equity Bank Congo, FirstBank DRC, and Rawbank. The first two banks have since merged to become the current Equity BCDC.

Multipay service enables holders of private (local) cards from these banks to perform transactions at ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, and in bank branches across the country.

Interswitch Limited is an Africa-focused integrated digital payments and commerce company that was established in 2002 in Nigeria. Interswitch, operating in over 14 countries in Africa, facilitates the electronic circulation of money and the exchange of value between individuals and organizations on a timely and consistent basis. The company offers a range of payment products and services such as cards, digital tokens, online stores, and payment platforms, to help businesses and individuals across Africa grow and thrive.

Expressing his enthusiasm for the partnership, Olivier Bueno, the Managing Director of Multipay Congo said:

“We are delighted to partner with Interswitch Limited, another pioneer and leader in the African digital payment space. This partnership will enable us to continue to pursue our ambition to actively participate in the financial inclusion objectives of the Central Bank of Congo by developing innovative, accessible, secure digital financial products and services, adapted to the needs of the population and businesses.”

By working with Interswitch, we leverage our local knowledge and skills to promote financial inclusion and economic empowerment, as well as to support the development of the digital economy in DRC and in the region.”

Also describing the partnership as a win-win for both organizations and the people of the Congo, Akeem Lawal, the Managing Director, Payment Processing and Switching (Interswitch Purepay) said:

“We are pleased to enter this partnership with Multipay Congo to bring our transformative payment solutions to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The partnership aligns with our overarching efforts to expand our footprint across more African regions, developing and deploying innovative solutions until payments are a seamless part of everyday life on the continent.

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This strategic alliance aims to redefine the digital payment experience, providing users with a secure and frictionless payment solution. The incorporation of OPay into the suite of checkout payment options on the Interswitch Payment Gateway (IPG) adds a new layer of convenience for users, complementing the existing array of payment methods such as Card, Quickteller, Transfer, QR, and USSD. Muyiwa Asagba, Managing Director of Digital Commerce & Merchant Acquiring (Paymate) at Interswitch, emphasized the significance of this partnership in advancing the growth of digital payments in the country.

He stated, “At Interswitch, our commitment is to cater to the evolving needs of consumers and merchants, fostering a more inclusive and dynamic digital payment ecosystem. Through our latest collaboration with OPay, we are excited to introduce a new dimension of payment convenience to users and merchants. This partnership reflects our dedication to introducing innovations that enhance the digital payment experience, and we are eager to witness the positive impact it will have on the entire payment ecosystem.”

 Ms. Elizabeth, Vice-President of App and Cards underlines that OPay remains focused on its commitment to making financial services more inclusive through technology hence the partnership with Interswitch to deliver an innovative payment solution. The Pay with OPay product is a 2-step process that will bring an extremely convenient payment experience, a closed-loop solution that is secure, with a 100% success rate and stable network uptime. This cutting-edge solution affirms our customer-first and pure excellence in innovation with high adoption within the web payment sector. Interswitch urges both customers and merchants to embrace this transformative feature, capitalizing on the convenience, security, and flexibility it brings. The company remains steadfast in its determination to continuously innovate cutting-edge solutions, providing customers with the latest and most secure payment options available.

Worthy of note is the fact that OPay was recently recognized by Interswitch for its outstanding performance amongst FinTech’s in Nigeria at the TechConnect 3.0 event which took place in November. As the digital payment landscape evolves, this alliance underscores Interswitch Group’s strong commitment to driving payment ecosystem collaboration and championing advancements that reshape the way financial transactions are conducted. This reaffirms the Group’s dedication to delivering leading-edge payment solutions that empower users and merchants alike, setting new standards in the dynamic realm of digital payments.

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The report also highlighted the high costs associated with payment infrastructure development.

Fintechs are facing increased scrutiny and compliance measures, necessitating a reevaluation of their operational strategies. This regulatory shift, coupled with the high costs associated with infrastructure development, has paved the way for significant involvement in the banking-fintech ecosystem. 

Against this backdrop, Stears’ analysis predicts a notable increase in opportunities for banks to lend their infrastructure to fintechs. The collaborative approach, born out of regulatory challenges and cost considerations, is expected to foster a more symbiotic relationship between traditional banks and fintech innovators.

“This financial and regulatory hurdle catalyses a novel era of collaboration between traditional banks and fintechs. The strategic partnership between these sectors is poised to be a game-changer, providing fintechs with crucial support to navigate regulatory challenges and infrastructure costs while enabling banks to tap into cutting-edge technological innovations. Overall, consumers are poised to benefit from the product innovation these collaborations would birth,” states Bolatito Bickersteth, Financial Analyst at Stears.

Further, as banks navigate the impact of the tough operating environment on their books in 2024 and seek to attract low-cost deposits, we note potential in collaborations with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and tapping into the unbanked population.  

Stears advocates for a strategic and collaborative approach, urging banks to leverage their established infrastructure and extensive networks to tap into the offline payment market and increase collaboration with SMEs. In doing so, banks will address the needs of the unbanked and the funding needs of SMEs and will also be catalysts for economic growth.  

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DLM Capital Group had its “A” rating upgraded to “A+” in October 2023 by DataPro with a stable outlook. The rating agency expressed that the upgrade was supported by DLM’s good revenue profile, good asset quality and experienced management team.

Pan African credit rating agency, Agusto & Co. in its rating assessment said DLM Capital Group’s rating was upgraded based on its strong brand, and expertise in structured credit, low leverage, acceptable profitability, with a competent and experienced management team. 

Agusto, in November 2023, also upgraded the company to a “Bbb” rating with a stable outlook from a previous rating “Bbb-” on account of improvement in credit risk and liquidity in risk management.

DLM Capital Group is a Development Investment Bank (DIB) with subsidiaries namely: DLM Advisory, DLM Asset Management, DLM Securities, CitiHomes Finance Company, DLM Nominees, DLM Trust Company, Sofri Bank (LINKS MFB), and DLM FX. The Group provides innovative solutions to economic and social developmental challenges that impact the everyday lives of people.

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He outlined how innovation through data and tech deployment can help Property Management Companies see new and existing business opportunities in the market to drive their operational growth. 

He urged operators  to think ahead of regulation, go into right partnerships and embrace strategic advisory services that would leapfrog their operations into the new growth phase.

Mr. Atanda, who was one of the panelists at the Good Tenant Conference held on Tuesday, December 5 , in Lagos, spoke on the theme: “How Property Management Companies Can Maximize Technology for ROI and Scaling Impact”.

Remita is becoming a data company, ready to support the sector in achieving its set goals and growth trajectory. 

He said: “Remita is becoming data company. Data can tell you a lot of things about the industry and the tenants. We are at the threshold of transforming the real estate in Nigeria using data and technology and supporting Startups that will be  going into the sector”.

Other panelists- Co-Founder, Good Tenants,  Adekunle Jinadu; Vice President, Marketing and Strategy, Terragon Group, Osarugue Awani;  Chief Business Director, Tremendous Limited, Charlotte Oduniade-Akeju, among others, agreed on the role data aggregation, partnerships and technology can play in the PropTech industry.

For instance, PropTech startups can access Remita Powerful ecosystem, expertise, and connections to accelerate their business success.

Remita’s comprehensive suite of tools and resources are designed to help Startups succeed at every stage of their business plans.

The tech giant is already working with some of Nigeria’s largest financial service providers and on-boarding Property Tech startups into its network will create the needed mileage for the entrants’ business success.

For instance, while the Remita Interbank Transfer Service allows startups to process real-time payments for customers directly on their platform using trusted banking rails, the Payment Gateway API authorises them to receive money via a variety of channels including cards, bank transfers, USSD etc.

The Remita Direct Debit API help startups collect loan repayments, subscription payments and other recurrent payments from their customers at predefined intervals while the Merchant Collections API enables them extend access to over 5,000+ businesses on the Remita platform to their customers using a single integration.

There is also the Vending Suite which allows startups to pay for airtime, data, cableTV and electricity on their platform through a single integration and terminals allows them to issue terminals to businesses on their platform for offline collections and the KYC/Data Checks that enable startups to perform KYC on data verification on customers.

For partnerships, the startups working with Remita will be introduced to  banks, Corporates, Ecosystem Players among others and will be able to access  seasoned technology experts who will tutor them at bi-Monthly office hours or curated sessions at Masterclasses on key issues round their operations.

Atanda explained that these services are readily available, which Property Tech startups can explore to enter  the next phase of transformation.

Nigerian real estate emerges as a compelling investment opportunity driven by robust growth. In 2022, the sector contributed over N28 trillion to the nation’s GDP, a testament to its economic significance. 

The emergence of Property Technology (PropTech),  the application of technology to create and deliver innovative real estate products and services to a wide range of users is expected the sector’s contribution to GDP by over 10% annually.

Experts believe that PropTech has the potential to trigger the same or higher impact as seen in Telecoms and FinTech, now   revolutionizing the financial services, digital marketing and entertainment segments of the economy.

The deployment of technology will make the Nigerian real estate sector more transparent; boost liquidity through access to flexible credit; cut fraud through increased title integrity; aggregate demand to drive greater homeownership and reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks limiting sectoral growth.

With a population exceeding 200 million people and an adult population estimated at 100 million, Nigeria remains a huge and unrealized market with 70% of GDP generated in the informal sector and urbanization rate standing at 50%.

But unlocking the market will require effective data aggregation; transparent processes; increased efficiency; quality standards and a simplified credit system. 

Also, the Nigerian real estate industry sits on a large data site, that should be digitised and brought into a pool that everybody can access.

Like every other segment of the economy,  innovation will always be ahead of regulation and operators in the real estate sector should be ahead of regulators in exploring the huge potential in the segment of the economy.

The Property Management Companies that fail to innovate will be left behind in the new growth phase of the industry that will be data and technology-driven.

This is because technology is going into the real estate, and defining how the sector works. There are some people who are not into real estate, but will be supporting with data. That is where technology startups come in to disrupt the sector,” he said.

The industry also requires that Property Management Companies work with other stakeholders to create Bank Verification Number (BVN) for real estate.

The move will enable the operators to know about the tenants, tenants will know about their neighbours, the houses available, who is renting where, where they work, how long they stay in that place, those that have transited from being tenants to landlords, among others.

Remita identified with the Africa Startup Festival and  identified with what they are doing in supporting startup with technology.

With Remita always available wherever there is  payment, the company is strategic in the new real estate growth phase that  will be driven by technology and will be available in offering direct debit for leases,  rentals, individuals, SMEs and corporates, lots more.

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Trade Lenda’s innovative technology has proven to achieve credit underwriting within six hours, which is four times more efficient than other service providers in the market, according to a statement.

“This partnership will seamlessly integrate Trade Lenda’s swift lending services within RedCloud’s intelligent open commerce platform, the Red101® web and mobile app which is currently available on the Google Play Store,” the statement said.

It said the collaboration will revolutionize credit accessibility for the thousands of distributors and merchants on RedCloud’s intelligent open commerce platform, allowing them to secure working capital at competitive rates based on their trading history and Know Your Customer Documentation, which will be used for credit scoring.

According to Head of Product Africa at RedCloud, Adeyemi Ogunyemi, the partnership with Trade Lenda aligns perfectly with the company’s mission to equip its customers with the necessary tools for success.

“It will significantly streamline the credit acquisition process, allowing our merchants to expand and thrive in today’s competitive market. We are empowering our distributors and merchants on RED101 to grow their purchasing capacities, stock more products and increase their profit margins,” he said.

Chief Operating Officer at Trade Lenda, Oyindamola Olaniyan said the importance of the partnership and Trade Lenda’s commitment is to provide accessible credit to Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) to help them scale.

“Our collaboration with RedCloud signifies more than a partnership. It is a powerful commitment to empower SMEs. Through Trade Lenda’s steadfast dedication to providing accessible credit and RedCloud’s innovative open commerce platform, we are not just supporting business growth; we are catalyzing opportunities for retailers to scale their businesses and significantly enhance their revenue.

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Cyber space stakeholders are calling for the integration of multiple Nigerian identity system into a unified system to easily detect and track perpetrators of cybercrime.

The stakeholders, comprising of representatives from Deposit Money Banks, FinTechs, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), among others joined their counterparts globally to mark the 2023 Cybersecurity Awareness Month marked.

They explained that the “Nigerian Identity’’ plan would allows the  international passport, phone number, Bank Verification Number  belonging to one individual to grafted in a composite interconnected file to easily detect and track perpetrators of cybercrime.

Speaking at the Information Security Society of Africa – Nigeria (ISSAN) Cybersecurity Roundtable with the theme: Re-Thinking Corporate Governance Rules on Money Transfers held in Lagos,  ISSAN President, David Isiavwe, stated the need for industry operators, law enforcement agencies and financial sector regulators to ensure they are steps ahead of the activities of cybercriminals.

According to him, “the cybersecurity space is constantly evolving. As the cybercriminals do not sleep or relent, operators and regulators have a duty to not also sleep. Indeed, the protection of the cyberspace is the responsibility of all stakeholders…”

“The increasing deployment of technology to optimize and ease financial transactions has not only revolutionized the payment space, but it has also broadened the attack surface for cybercrime. Thus, it has only become necessary that guidelines and principles that provide safety to these systems are continuously adopted locally and internationally as cyber-attacks are no more a matter of “if” but “when” they will occur.” He stated.

Isiavwe who is also the Chief Compliance Officer of Ecobank Nigeria, noted that FinTechs have a critical role to play in the future of financial services, noting that the more they innovate, the more they need to automate the attendant controls and ensure that they are strictly monitored.

The stakeholders  also agreed that there was also the urgent need to create effective blacklists of criminals in the financial sector so that when they have committed any infraction anywhere within the industry, they should be blacklisted industry wide.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Director, Payment System Management, Musa Jimoh, lauded the efforts of ISSAN in promoting a safer cyber space for financial transactions in the county, stressing that it is the responsibility of all stakeholders to ensure a robust payment ecosystem and a sound regulatory regime as the apex bank cannot do it alone. He further emphasized that banks and FinTechs should put adequate measures in place to protect their customers, stressing that it was the only way to embrace and trust the payment system.

“The banks should know the identity of the entity that is conducting transactions. Banks should invest and strengthen their KYC. They should monitor transactions and put adequate measures in place to trigger suspicious transactions They should continue to educate their customers and create more awareness. Consumer protection is dear to CBN. It is the obligation of the banks to protect customers who are vulnerable. Banks and FinTech’s should exhibit good market conduct to earn the trust of their customers.” he said.

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He made this call while speaking as a panelist at the 2023 Treasury Leadership Forum organised by Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria Limited, held recently in Lagos.

He said that advancements in automation and artificial intelligence are radically altering how work gets done and who does it, technology’s larger impact will be in complementing and augmenting human capabilities, not replacing them.

He proposed that organisations will benefit more from communicating their technology decisions to mitigate conflict.

“There are unintended consequences of automation”, Deremi says. “In a situation where workers don’t know what to expect conflict can arise”. He advised therefore that “people along the value chain must know how automation will impact them and this also has to do with internal and external processes”.

He further emphasised the need for collaboration among financial service providers and technology service providers, which he described as the new reality and future of the industry.

The panel session themed: ‘Harnessing Technology for More Efficient Treasury Management’ brought together treasury professionals, financial experts, regulators, and technology providers to discuss the latest trends and best practices in treasury management.

The move towards new technologies such as APIs, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning or advanced analytics, big data, blockchain, and cloud computing to drive innovation is enabling rapid experimentation and new product development. However, the key challenge is knowing where to start.

Atanda said organisations must have a clear idea of their objectives to ensure that every project sets out to bring value to treasury management, and ultimately improve other areas of the business.

“Not all businesses will be on the same technology maturity level, hence your treasury requirements should be need-specific. Where there is a disparity in your internal capacity versus the supplier capacity, the automation will likely fail. Systems exist everywhere but they are not meant to be used the same way everywhere”.

“In today’s fast-paced business environment, there is the need to deal with the challenges of automating treasury management. Having a grand clarity of what the objectives are will help analyse the financial environment and manage conflicts,” he said.

According to ‘Deremi, the focus should be to implement technology into specific projects with targeted goals such as risk management, cost alleviation, or improved efficiency, and then integrate processes and platforms into a Treasury Management System (TMS).

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Dissecting the discussion that focused on the importance of discovering and also adopting the factors that drive cashless adoption, ‘Deremi stressed how transitioning financial services to a cashless payment model fosters socioeconomic development.

“Contactless payment can greatly increase the use of cashless transactions. For us in the developing economy, which Nigeria partly belongs to, financial inclusion is crucial, and it depends on digital inclusion. Ultimately, this is about socio-economic growth, because cashless is not an end, but a means to improve and speed up payment, which benefits the whole ecosystem,” he said.

Africa, especially Nigeria, has seen a meteoric rise in the fintech industry which has dismantled traditional barriers and ushered in a new era of financial inclusion. However, the advent of contactless payment promises to completely transform how people transact goods and services on the go.

Experts predict that contactless payments are set to surpass cash and card payments in the near future, as they are growing rapidly with a 15.4 per cent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR).

Reiterating Remita’s contribution to the advancement of cashless transactions in Africa, ‘Deremi emphasised that collaboration among stakeholders will create revolutionary technology that makes financial transactions easier and more accessible.

“While cashless payments offer clear advantages and development potential, we must not overlook the key dependencies involved. The development of cashless payments should be accompanied by careful consideration of regulations and standards to maximise its benefits,” he added.

With over two decades of expertise in the fintech industry, Deremi Atanda is a skilled business leader and innovator. He is driven to use technology to address social and economic challenges while creating value for customers and stakeholders.

Remita Payment Services Limited is a leading provider of electronic payment solutions in Nigeria and across Africa. Under ‘Deremi’s leadership and vision, Remita is a pioneer of Nigeria’s fintech revolution, offering innovative solutions for financial empowerment and collaborative growth.

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