Nigerian banks, FinTechs compete for $897bn instant payment market
GTCO’s HabariPay hit the ground running with the launch of Squad last year and has made an impression already. Squad is a digital payments platform to provide customers with the tools to do business digitally.
HabariPay’s Squad is now competing with the likes of Interswitch, Paystack, and Flutterwave in the same arena.
Mid-size banks like Wema Bank, Stanbic IBTC, Sterling Bank and Fidelity are also not letting up. The oldest indigenous bank in Nigeria, Wema, offers ALAT, a 2017 product that is only available online.
The app is one of the first fully electronic banks in Nigeria and has the first-mover advantage for electronic payment. It recently launched a QR code feature that allows its merchants to receive payments.
Some Nigerian banks with vast offshore presence are also primed to take advantage of the situation.
Access Bank and UBA, two of the largest Nigerian banks with offshore presence have several electronic money transfer products that help their customers move funds across Africa with ease.
By offering customers a service that allows them to transfer and receive payments across their branch network in Africa, merchants have the incentive to leverage on these platforms to facilitate trade.
Despite the brave efforts put forward by Nigerian banks, they are still behind when it comes to the adoption rate in the instant payment space.
While data is not available for who owns a market share, the Fintechs appear to be more popular per Nairametrics research. Their solutions are also better developed and compatible for ease of transaction flow.
The telcos are also another set of competition commercial banks need to deal with. Perhaps the most to gain from the central bank’s latest policy, telcos have the technology and customer base to mop up liquidity via wallet offerings.
However, its PSB licenses require that it works with commercial banks to maintain deposits.
MTN with its MoMo, can collect deposits and offer savings accounts to its consumers. Individuals and small enterprises are among their clients. It can also facilitate cross-border transfers through all of Nigeria’s available methods.
Competition is likely to intensify in the coming months if not years as more Nigerians migrate to electronic banking and adopt e-payment. Currently, the market is targeted at merchant payments, e-commerce, and peer 2 peer transactions, but we see these transcending other areas in the economy. Insurance premiums, retail investing, collective investment schemes, tax collection, etc. will all migrate to electronic payments.
The FinTechs or banks that build the best solutions to capture these markets will likely come out tops.
