The Interswitch Managing Director for Payment Processing and Switching, Akeem Lawal, has described the rigid border system in Africa as an impediment to the growth of digital technology and businesses across the continent.
Lawal disclosed this while addressing journalists at the Interswitch Techconnect 4.0 in Lagos State on Thursday.
He stressed that the lack of unified currency and easy movement within the border of African countries also pose challenges to the growth of businesses especially in the digital ecosystem.
He said, “Today if you want to do business across Africa, it is difficult. You have to deal with currency issues, deal with payment system infrastructure and lack of digital literacy.
“What Interswitch believes is that, with technology, a lot of those problems would be solved within the next two or three years.”
He stressed further that the issue of fraud has also been a major challenge in the technology ecosystem across the globe.
According to him, Interswitch has been able to tackle the issue of fraud through education, identifying risky customers, and adoption of technology.
He continued, “Fraud is a global challenge and it is not peculiar to Nigeria alone and in Nigeria, we have been able to tackle the issue of fraud through some main pillars. The first one is education. A lot of what we do in the Techconnect series is to educate our customers on how they can protect themselves and their customers against fraud.
“The second element is in the customer onboarding. You need to be able to identify risky customers and avoid bringing them into your system which is one of the reasons the Central Bank of Nigeria insisted on KYC compliance. So we are helping our customers to not only understand the compliance requirements but also to provide them with onboarding solutions.”
Lawal noted that the adoption of technology that could detect and solve a range of fraud issues would also limit the challenges posed by fraud in the digital ecosystem.
He concluded that the Interswitch Techconnect series has over the years relied on feedback mechanisms to improve the operations of the organisation in providing better and more efficient services to its customers.
