The evolution of Africa’s digital payment industry is hinged on the rise of innovation globally. With technology as a driving force, the industry is seen as a major growth opportunity, especially as the convenience and scalability of payment methods improve and there is continuous development of supporting infrastructure.

It is against this backdrop that we launched an array of innovative products targeted at integrating payments across channels used by different operators ranging from banks, fintechs, micro-finance banks and other financial institutions.

The products include Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), Payment-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Interswitch Security-as-a- Solution (ISaaS), to help curtail the menace of fraud associated with payments.

The products, which speak to the needs of customers, and make payments seamless, have been designed to spur growth, as the synergy created will avail various industry players the opportunity to explore avenues for mutual growth, which will in turn create a robust payment ecosystem.

At the launch of these products, Akeem Lawal, Managing Director, Payment Processing and Switching (Purepay), said the solutions reaffirm the company’s continued drive to improve Nigeria’s digital payments landscape through innovation and the development of first-rate solutions and infrastructure that address pressing needs in the payments ecosystem.

He said: “At Interswitch, we will never stop pushing the limits. We will keep innovating and creating inclusive solutions that cut across the various needs of our customers. Therefore, we are launching these products to address prevailing issues within the digital payment ecosystem, enhance business development and provide seamless payment solutions to customers.”

Reports show that many African countries have seen record growth in digital payments over the past two years. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria, mobile money transaction volumes doubled to around 800 million in 2020, and it stands at over seven trillion presently.

A survey by McKinsey shows that around 80 percent of respondents of payments experts across Africa believe that the shift to e-payments will continue to accelerate while 84 percent expects digital payments to grow by at least 30 percent per year through 2025. A third of respondents expect a 50 percent annual increase.

In all, McKinsey predicts that between 2020 and 2025, the digital payments industry will grow by around 150 percent to reach almost $40 billion in revenues from domestic payments alone, with about 188 billion in transaction volumes.

Our products, which are already out in the market, will help bridge the digital payments gap as they are socially inclusive - solving critical challenges, protecting customers against digital payment fraud, providing effective value financing tools for lenders, seamless integration to payment channels and enhanced customer experience, among others.

The growth of digitalization brings extensive opportunities for all sectors, including the digital payment industry. However, the same is also true for payment fraudsters. According to estimates, financial losses due to online payment fraud will exceed $206 billion between now and 2025.

To curtail digital payments fraud, we introduced ISaaS to help fight fraud and financial crime. The product also helps to protect customers against payments fraud tendencies, card fraud, application fraud, payment fraud, merchant acquiring fraud and money laundering, among others.

With the use of algorithms, Interswitch monitors, real-time, customers and their lifestyles to help prevent activities associated with fraud, as well as provide solutions to anti-money laundering.

For the provision of seamless banking services, Interswitch came up with BaaS – Banking As A Service. This is a one-stop digital banking platform to enable the creation of different products for customers, with over 400 ready integration APIs. The benefits of the solution are modular and highly composable, dynamically flexible and agile, cloud ready and containerized, rapid time to market deployments, cost effective and efficient.