9 Payment Service Bank (9PSB), Nigeria’s digital payment service bank, focused on financial inclusion, has re-emphasized that financial inclusion is the key enabler to poverty reduction and economic prosperity in Africa at the Regtech Africa Conference held recently in Lagos.

The event themed: Harnessing Partnerships for Africa’s Prosperity – Bridging the Data Trust Gap, is a convergence of financial experts and thought leaders in the digital financial service industry across Africa, aimed at sharing knowledge and proffering strategies to increase data trust in the last mile digital financial service delivery.

Delivering a keynote presentation, the Managing Director, and Chief Executive Officer, 9 Payment Service Bank (9PSB), Branka Mracajac stated that financial inclusion remains a key focus in Nigeria and in Africa.

It plays significant role in reducing poverty and fostering prosperity of the people. Achieving the desired results requires conscious effort by players in the industry to make financial products and services available, accessible, and affordable for all unbanked and underserved individuals and businesses, regardless of their age, gender, geographical region, and social economic status.

It also aims at empowering people with knowledge through financial literacy programmes and providing them with tools such as savings account and other payment options to participate in formal financial systems.

“A survey conducted in Nigeria in 2008 by EFinA revealed that about 53 per cent of adult were excluded from financial services, furthermore, financial inclusion as a vehicle for economic development have notable positive impact in Nigeria, it decreased the exclusion rate from the initial 53 per cent of about 40 million of adults to 36 per cent which today means about 29 million of adult Nigerians. 59 per cent of households in

Nigeria are income providers, while most of the income providers are women, unfortunately, they are the ones that are mostly excluded from formal financial services, since Nigeria has about 26 per cent of adult Nigerians that are financially excluded, the target for this year as mandated by the Central Bank of Nigeria is to attain 25 per cent inclusion figure,” Mracajac added.

‘As we strive to grow financial inclusion, lack of access to financial services, low financial literacy among the populace, prohibitive cost of financial services and lack of trust in financial institutions are standing as roadblocks.

Therefore, stakeholders and various industry players should begin to adopt localization of financial literacy and education, reduce minimal cost of accessibility for the people, simplified products, and processes. She remarked.

The 2024 RegTech Africa Conference had a line-up of stellar speakers, case studies, panel discussions, engaging discussions, unique presentations providing access to a wealth of industry-leading knowledge, sharing best practices and experiences, spotlighting trends, information exchange, cutting-edge insights, and outlooks with actionable takeaways.

Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents of Nigeria (AMMBAN) has decried the directive coming from the Corporate Affairs Commission mandating all Point Of Sale (POS) agents to register with the commission.

At a press conference which was held over the weekend in Lagos, the group insisted that the reason tendered by the commission that the registration was to curb crime in the Fintech space was not tenable, maintaining that it was purely a revenue drive agenda.

In a paper read by the National General Secretary, Oluwasegun Elegbede on behalf of the President of the association, Fasasi Sarafsdeen Atanda said, “The Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents of Nigeria (AMMBAN) strongly disagrees with the recent directive by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) that all POS agents must register with it, regardless of their status as individuals or non-individuals. We believe this directive is unnecessary, contradictory to existing laws, and amounts to a mere revenue generation move to further tax hapless Nigerians.”

AMMBAN maintained that the reason that the directive was designed to curb crime in the financial space was not tenable. “We disagree with CAC’s claim that it wants to fight crimes in the agency agency banking business space through registration. We believe that the kind of crimes in the space are both human and technical, which CAC registration cannot fight.”

Referring to Section 18 (1) of CAMA which states that “A person may apply to the commission for the registration of a company” and section 22(1) states that “A company shall be deemed to be a separate legal entity from its members.”

The group insisted that what this means is that individuals and non-individuals (companies) have different legal statuses and requirements. Moreover, the CBN Policy on financial inclusion and development states that “agency banking services shall be provided by agents who are individuals or non-individuals (companies) registered with the CBN (Section 2.1).

“The group disclosed that the policy clearly recognized the distinction between individuals and non-individuals and does not require individuals to register with CAC,” the paper read.

AMMBAN disclosed that it has made and still making spirited efforts in combating the issue of crimes within their business space,  and condemned the insistence of CAC to deploy the police to execute the directive against those who fail to register their business by July 7.

The group while denying allegation credited to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that AMMBAN members are  colluding with bank staff to hoard cash or engage in buying and selling of cash. Aside asserting that the allegation was misleading, they also stated that it is damaging to the reputation of their members who are law-abiding citizens.

“Our association finds it criminal for anyone to buy and sell cash, as our role is to bring succour to the general populace at a very convenient cost to serve.” And they also called on the commission to endeavor to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt.

AMMBAN also categorically denied allegation that her members are responsible for scarcity of cash, adding that her members are also facing similar challenge because their agents are not given any preferences in accessing cash from the bank, saying, “it has been a long standing demand that the CBN categorize agencies into different tiers to enable them to have access to cash, rather than seeing them as individuals with a limit of N500000. This will help to address the current cash scarcity and promote financial inclusion.”

The group further said that they reject the CBN ‘s policy limiting multiple accounts/wallets to two. They added that the policy has crashed the agent network category and is an attack on financial inclusion. “We urge everyone to work together to promote financial inclusion and economic growth, rather than engaging in activities that can undermine the progress made so far.”

Chairman of AMMBAN, Fasasi Sarafadeen Atanda disclosed that their members have lost millions of jobs due to inconsistent policies in the Fintech space. “People are asking us why are we taking this step, we are taking this step to save millions of jobs in Nigeria, because it is not just about POS, it is actually beyond POS.

“We know the implications of most of these policies that are not well thought out and their impacts on the economy generally. As of today since the beginning of the cashless policy and the cash redesign policies last year, to the level of NIN and BVN linkage and then the recent policies of asking all agents to go and register with CAC, and lots of policies being dished out to providers internally via internal memo, such as restriction on how many accounts an agent can have, all these policies have led to the following statistics: We have lost over 1.5 million jobs in the last one year.”

He said there are over 3.7 million POS in circulation as of today, but the service providers were only able to deploy 2.7, leaving the gap of 1million POS amounting to a loss of 1million jobs in Nigeria.

He further added “Also agents that are utilizing Fintech solutions, they are utilizing mobile apps, they are utilizing websites, they are also exploring digital and Fintech solutions, that space alone is employing hundreds of jobs, in the form of app developers, UI, US Engineers and all others in that space, we have lost cumulatively 200,000 jobs.

He also stated that the aggregators were not left out in the policy summersaults. “And aggregators, we have about 217 registered Fintech companies in Nigeria and most of them are adopting the strategy of aggregators. Who are the aggregators or who are the agent network?

They are the people that are stepping down all the services of financial institutions. You have aggregators that are helping providers to deploy and manage US terminals and each and every one of these 217 registered Fintech, they have a minimum of a 1000 aggregators. So when you multiply a thousand with at least, 200 out of the 217, you can see the number of jobs that have been lost through that.”

He also said that Nigeria has lost a lot of foreign direct investment.

National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday said Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined by 2.98 per cent in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024.

In its latest report, the bureau put the nation’s current growth rate at 2.98 per cent, saying the growth rate is higher than the 2.31 per cent recorded in the same quarter in 2023 but lower than the 3.46 per cent recorded in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2023.

“Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 2.98% (year-on-year) in real terms in the first quarter of 2024. This growth rate is higher than the 2.31% recorded in the first quarter of 2023 and lower than the fourth quarter of 2023 growth of 3.46%,” the report read.

“The performance of the GDP in the first quarter of 2024 was driven mainly by the Services sector, which recorded a growth of 4.32% and contributed 58.04% to the aggregate GDP.

“The agriculture sector grew by 0.18%, from the growth of -0.90% recorded in the first quarter of 2023. The growth of the industry sector was 2.19%, an improvement from 0.31% recorded in the first quarter of 2023.

“In terms of share of the GDP, the services sector contributed more to the aggregate GDP in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the corresponding quarter of 2023.”