E-Financial
Interswitch Group Unveils Coordinated Interventions Against COVID-19
Interswitch Group, one of Africa’s leading integrated payment & digital commerce players has announced a series of intervention measures as part of a coordinated effort to complement ongoing efforts from public and private sector perspectives to address the spread and mitigate the negative impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria.
Inspired to make a difference as far as playing their part in fighting the scourge, employees of the company have rallied together to voluntarily contribute various amounts from their compensation, raising a total of 75 million Naira in an employee-led effort, which the company has supplemented with the sum of N230 million, thereby bringing the funds raised towards the organization’s COVID-19 response effort to a grand total of N305 million Naira.
This is coming on the heels of concerted efforts by good-spirited individuals and corporate organisations to support the Federal and State governments in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.
This intervention fund from the Interswitch Group and its employees is being deployed to provide support to Federal & State Governments, as well as some selected private sector-led initiatives.
The primary focus of the fund is supporting the creation and equipment of isolation centres, purchasing COVID-19 Test kits, providing personal protective gear and related support to frontline heath workers and to setting up foodbanks to cater to under-privileged communities in Lagos.
Execution has commenced with Interswitch’s Verve Brand, which has sealed a partnership with the Lagos State Feeding Program to provide raw material food items for poor & vulnerable communities in Lagos. Interswitch also supported The Young President’s Association (YPO) and the Lagos State government in setting up the already functional Eti-Osa isolation centre in Lagos.
The fund has also supported the Delta State Government by providing tropicalized ultra-low temperature (ULT) laboratory refrigerators that will be used for the storage of reagents and other laboratory consumables and COVID-19 test samples pending when they will be transported to the designated COVID-19 Testing Laboratory in Irrua, Edo State.
The company is finalizing discussions with states including Edo, Enugu, Kaduna, Ogun and Oyo with a view to providing test kits and personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline health workers in these states.
Furthermore, by way of providing free technology for the use of governments and healthcare authorities, Interswitch has leveraged its core capabilities as a technology company and systems integrator, manifested through the initiative of eClat Healthcare, Interswitch’s health-tech subsidiary company, in building out a user-friendly, locally-nuanced software application which is useful for members of the public as a first-line intervention for the assessment of risk and pre-disposition to the novel Coronavirus infection.
The software platform analyses users’ information provided from answers to a series of questions around risk factors, recent exposure, observed symptoms, health and travel history.
From an epidemiological mapping perspective, the application also offers insight-based analytics, based on its capabilities to track and aggregate insights into geographical heat-maps which highlight areas in which pre-disposition is deemed to be higher, to optimize decisioning and ultimately enable prioritization of interventions, a key value proposition to public healthcare authorities.
This initiative essentially serves to provide guided and up-to-date information on COVID-19, reduce panic, lower gross footfall to medical facilities, being a first-line checkpoint and ultimately reduce risk of exposure to health workers on the frontlines of fighting the pandemic.
Designed with an interactive interface, the solution facilitates further virtual consultation for infected persons, meaning infected persons can stay in their homes and access consultation as to whether their symptoms give cause for alarm or not.
The eClat Health-tech solution supporting State Governments’ response to COVID-19 has been implemented in 20 states across the country.
It is currently in use in Lagos State’s Eti-Osa isolation centre, and in Edo, Ogun and Oyo States, while it has been implemented and is set to go live in Delta, Kaduna, Bayelsa, Yobe and Jigawa States, where healthcare personnel have also been trained in readiness to go-live. The system has been primed for the other states which are at various stages of implementation, training and approval to go live. These are Kano, Katsina, Rivers, Abia, Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi, Akwa Ibom and Imo States.
Also by way of exploring collaborative private-sector led initiatives to complement the drive of Federal & State Governments as well as public health authorities to mitigate the spread of the pandemic, Interswitch will leverage its existing partnership with players such as PAX Technology (a leading international provider of Point-of-Sale payment terminals) to provide essential medical consumables and supplies such as N95 facial masks and thermometers as part of the quest to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.
Interswitch has also expressed a commitment to leveraging its creative capabilities, social and digital media assets to roll out awareness and sensitization campaigns to propagate WHO-approved messaging & information on COVID-19, under the umbrella platform of #FlattenTheCov.
Commenting on the essence of these interventions, Mitchell Elegbe, Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer at Interswitch opined that;
“These interventions sit well within the context of our corporate mission; to create transaction solutions that enable individuals and communities prosper across Africa.
“Our efforts are underpinned by the realization that this pandemic, if left unchecked is a potent threat to interactions which facilitate entrepreneurship and commerce, without which inclusive prosperity will remain a pipe dream.
It is our desire and earnest hope that these initiatives, aggregated with the goodwill and committed efforts of many other like-minded corporate entities and well-meaning individuals who have rallied to this noble cause would significantly contribute to the flattening of the COVID-19 infection curve in Nigeria, which remains one of Africa’s most important economic hubs”.
By virtue of the alliance with technology providers such as PAX, Interswitch has also underscored commitment by the partners to promote the adoption of contactless point-of-sale payment solutions across the West Africa market.
Contactless payment solutions include payments with contactless-enabled credit and debit cards, as well as QR codes, underscored by the realization that the widespread adoption of contactless payment solutions have greater propensity to better mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Federal court in Lagos has suspended the enforcement of Nigeria’s most comprehensive framework for regulating digital lending apps.
On April 15, Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa of the Federal High Court in Lagos granted an interim injunction blocking the enforcement of the Digital, Electronic, Online, or Non-Traditional Consumer Lending Regulations 2025, better known as the DEON Regulations.
The order followed an urgent ex parte application filed the previous day by the Wireless Application Service Providers Association of Nigeria (WASPA Nigeria), the industry body representing wireless application service providers operating mainly within the telecoms ecosystem.
The suit targets twelve specific provisions of the text, covering licensing, sanctions, compliance obligations and data-handling rules, according to court documentation published by Lawyard.
Until the next hearing on April 27, 2026, the regulator cannot impose sanctions, enforce compliance directives, or issue new instructions to WASPA members.
The judge also barred the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) from interfering with the ongoing commercial operations of association members.
The case pits two actors whose respective mandates the Nigerian legal framework has never clearly separated.
On one side stands the FCCPC — the federal agency established in 2018 to enforce consumer protection and competition — which gazetted the DEON Regulations on July 21, 2025, under sections 17, 18 and 163 of its founding Act.
In a press statement dated September 3, 2025, Tunji Bello, executive vice chairman, FCCPC, justified the rules by citing “a long history of complaints” involving exploitative practices, data breaches, abusive debt recovery, and harassment.
On the other side, WASPA Nigeria contests the very legitimacy of the FCCPC’s intervention, arguing that services tied to telecoms — airtime credit, data loans, mobile-financing products — fall exclusively under the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the telecoms regulator created by the Nigerian Communications Act of 2003.
In the affidavit deposed by Ayo Stuffman, the association contends that the FCCPC is acting ultra vires and creating a regulatory regime parallel to the NCC’s.
A jurisdictional war that stretches far beyond a procedural dispute
The conflict is not limited to a question of legal boundaries. It strikes at the commercial core of the market: who collects the licensing fees, who sets the operational conditions, who governs the financial products embedded in telecom networks.
Nigeria’s consumer credit stock reached 3.82 trillion naira at the end of December 2024, up 21.27% on September, according to Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) data relayed by The Cable and AFP.
In the fourth quarter of 2024 alone, personal loans disbursed amounted to approximately 470 billion naira.
A growing share flows through mobile applications and telecom-embedded lending products — including MTN’s MoMo Airtime Lending, operated by the country’s largest telecom operator.
If the court validates WASPA’s position, these products fall outside the FCCPC’s scope and come under the sole authority of the NCC, a regulator historically less active on consumer protection issues.
Available data on demand illustrate the social stakes. Between 2021 and 2023, the FCCPC recorded more than 11,000 consumer complaints for harassment, data abuse and unethical debt recovery practices, according to the agency.
The number of lending applications approved by the FCCPC rose from 269 in September 2024 to 408 in March 2025, while 47 apps were delisted and 88 were placed on the watchlist, according to data compiled by AFP and OneSafe.
The DEON Regulations were meant to introduce interest-rate caps, precontractual disclosure obligations, continuous supervision of recovery practices and fines of up to 100 million naira per violation, according to Legit.ng. The compliance deadline was set for January 5, 2026, and the FCCPC had issued written compliance notices to operators with an April 16 deadline, according to WASPA’s affidavit.
It is precisely this enforcement pressure that triggered the legal challenge.
Federal government has said that Nigeria has no plans to seek a loan from the International Monetary Fund’s proposed $50 billion support package for economies hit by the Middle East crisis.
Wale Edun, minister of Finance, who stated this, said that Nigeria’s current reliance on domestic economic reforms and fund mobilisation was working.
Edun gave these insights during the African Finance Ministers’ briefing, on Thursday, at the ongoing IMF/World Bank annual meetings, in Washington, DC.
He noted that for over two years, Nigeria’s investment in economic reforms have begun to yield results, restoring policy credibility and strengthening the country’s resilience against global economic shocks.
Edun told the global west and the rest of the world that Nigeria now prioritises market-based adjustments, avoiding administrative controls, particularly in foreign exchange and petroleum pricing mechanisms.
His assertion follows the disclosure by the IMF that a possible $50 billion support to cushion vulnerable economies against the crisis in the Middle East, was on the pipeline.
Despite clarifying Nigeria’s lack of interest in borrowing, Edun, urged the IMF to ensure faster financial assistance for African countries who will need help from the $50 billion global support package.
“Nigeria has no plans at the moment to approach the IMF or any other such body,” Edun said, emphasising that Nigeria’s reliance on market mechanisms had led to smoother economic adjustments, reduced disruptions and is sustaining the country’s macroeconomic trajectory.
“The IMF talked about $50 billion and we all know that the funding will largely go to Africa, because those are the most vulnerable countries. And the reality is that what we’re asking for in this instance, is that the funds and the support be released quickly and at scale.
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in collaboration with financial market dealers, has introduced the Nigerian Overnight Financing Rate (NOFR), a standardized benchmark designed to enhance transparency and strengthen monetary policy transmission.
Olayemi Michael Cardoso, CBN gov
Hakama Sidi Ali, spokesperson of the CBN in a statement on Friday, said that the the NOFR is expected to improve price discovery and transparency, while promoting consistent pricing of money market instruments across Nigeria’s financial system.
The regulator noted that the new benchmark positions Africa’s most populous country alongside leading global reference rates such as SOFR in the United States, SONIA in the United Kingdom, €STR in the Eurozone, and TONA in Japan.
“It also complements African benchmarks such as JIBAR (South Africa). Following a stakeholder engagement session held on February 27, 2026, where market participants formally adopted the benchmark, and subsequent regulatory approval, NOFR is now in use, with the CBN serving as the benchmark administrator.
“The bank will ensure governance, transparency, and regular publication of the rate,” CBN stated.
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