15th October, 2023
Africa’s leading integrated payments and digital commerce company, Interswitch, has reiterated its long-standing dedication to driving the growth of the digital payment ecosystem at the TechConnect 3.0 event recently held at The Lekki Coliseum, Lekki, Lagos on October 12, 2023.
The TechConnect 3.0 event brought together eggheads across the fintech sector, banks, and other financial institutions who expounded on the theme “Adapting, Scaling, and Advancing with Fintech.”
The event showcased a platform where industry players shared at varying lengths data-driven strategies, empirical expositions, projected trends, and forecasts to industry challenges, and weighed in on steps to be taken within the financial sector to nimbly adapt to changing technological and economic conditions, scale operations, and advance its services to better serve a wide spectrum of customers.
The first event in the notable series kicked off on September 7, 2023, at the International Conference Centre, Ibadan, the state capital of Oyo, and spanned across other cosmopolitan cities in the country, including Abuja, Enugu, Port-Harcourt, and Lagos, where the grand finale took place.
Speaking at the event, Akeem Lawal, Managing Director, Payment Processing and Switching, Interswitch Purepay, emphasized on the need to explore global trends in digital payment technology. He stressed on the importance of partnership to increase the country’s chances of a successful digital transformation.
According to Lawal, “TechConnect 3.0 exhibits Interswitch’s unwavering commitment to leading the charge in the advancement of the payment ecosystem. Interswitch has been at the frontiers of innovation in Africa, particularly in the financial sector and is utilizing cutting-edge technological solutions that can facilitate contactless payment transactions. Today, Interswitch’s digital innovation cuts across peer-to-peer lending, bots, biometrics, mobile banking, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and decentralized finance (DeFi), among others to help address scaling challenges and empower individuals and communities to break free from the clutches of poverty.”
Lawal further stated that “Partnership and strong ties are the cornerstones of transformation in today’s rapidly dynamic digital world. This is why, Interswitch will continue to leverage partnership to drive the growth of the payment industry.”
Chijioke Eze, Business Development Manager, Financial Services Business, Interswitch, also gave his remarks at the event. He noted that organizations must equip their staff with risk-based strategies for tackling fraud to avoid falling prey. He also stated the types of fraud financial institutions must be familiar with, including identity and processing fraud, chargebacks, and cyberattacks.
The event also featured a panel session tagged “Advancing Cross-Border Payments within the African Continent: Opportunities for Financial Services Sectors.” The panelists discussed how financial institutions could leverage technology to address the challenges associated with cross-border payments enabling individuals, business owners and SMEs to transact seamlessly and deepen financial inclusion across the African market.
The panelists pointed out that intra-sector partnerships would enable financial firms drive growth and create a formidable ecosystem through unique products such as API gateway, mobile wallet, tokenization, and more.
Awards were presented to First Bank, UBA, Access Bank, Zenith Bank, Premium Trust Bank, Opay, Moniepoint and Accion MFB, among others in acknowledgement of their laudable contributions to the sector, and as part of Interswitch’s reaffirmation as a collaborative enabler.