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Financial Services
Nigerian fintech companies raised $600 million in five years – McKinsey Report
McKinsey report has revealed that Nigeria’s fintech companies have raised over $600 million in funding in the last six years.
In a space of five years, Nigeria’s fintech companies have raised over $600 million in funding, attracting 25% ($122 million) of the $491.6 million raised by African tech startups in 2019 alone – second only to Kenya, which attracted $149 million. The period under review is 2014- 2019.
This information is contained in a recently published report by McKinsey titled “Harnessing Nigeria’s Fintech Potential.” The report highlighted the combination of youthful demographic, increasing smartphone penetration, and concerted efforts to driving financial inclusion as factors that interplay to produce conducive and thriving enabler or platform for the fintech firms in Nigeria.
READ: BOOM: CBN issues new circular that could force banks to lend to nearly everyone.
The report outlined some of the feedback against fintech companies ranging from poor user experience, underwhelming value-added from using some of the financial products, low returns on savings, and limited access to investment opportunities.
The report also showed that Nigerian fintech companies are primarily focused on payments and consumer lending, having allotted an aggregate of 39% on payments to consumers, SMEs, and corporate FSP, and an additional 25% to consumer lending. The breakdown is depicted below.
READ: Banks Vs Fintechs – Who should be Afraid? (Part Two)
On the driving factors behind the increasing choice of payment and consumer lending as an area of concentration by fintech companies, a part of the report read thus;
“The factors driving growth in each of these segments vary. Payment-focused solutions have surged over the past two years, spurred in part, by the central bank’s financial inclusion drive and favorable regulatory policies, including revised Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements for lower-tier accounts and incentives, to accelerate development of agent networks across the country. Paga, OPay, Cellulant, and Interswitch’s QuickTeller compete with mobile banking applications and bank unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) channels to send and receive transactions and bill payments.
READ: PenCom recovers N17.51billion from defaulting employers, imposes penalties
“Fintech activity in lending is picking up, thanks to the fact that fintechs are able to leverage payment data to determine lending risk more easily, and utilize smartphones as a distribution channel. For example, fintech startups such as Carbon and Renmoney have successfully leveraged alternative credit-scoring algorithms, to provide instant, unsecured, short-term loans to individuals. A few fintechs, such as Migo, have also stepped up to offer unsecured working-capital loans to SMEs with minimal documentation. Banking fintech solutions have been fast followers here, with leading banks launching digital lending platforms like Quick Credit by GTBank and Quickbucks by Access Bank.”
In general, access, convenience, and trust have all played key roles in the increasing use of fintech products. For example, in the last six months, 54% of consumers have reported increased usage of their fintech products
READ: Key ‘side-hustles’ Nigerian Bankers supplement their income with
Why this matters
In line with the National Financial Inclusion goals of 2020, and owing to the fact that despite the remarkable progress recorded by traditional banking institutions, the vast majority of consumers are underserved. Hence, the issue of accessibility especially in remote areas, affordability, and user experience have been a front-burner issue.
The aforementioned issues have created an opening that fintechs have been quick to take advantage of, providing enhanced propositions across the value chain, to address major points in affordable payments, quick loans, and flexible savings and investments among others.
READ: CBN grants licenses to 3 Payment Service Banks
Conclusion
Fintech accounted for only 1.25% of retail banking revenues in 2019, signaling a room for development. Despite recording a growth of fintech investments in Nigeria to the tune of approximately $460 million in 2019, majority of these investments were from external investors. This was only a small fraction (1.27%) of the $36 billion invested in fintech globally.
READ: New report details how Nigerian fintech companies are expanding their business scopes
The report opined that full optimization of fintech companies in Nigeria can stimulate economic activity, by creating a multiplier effect, and can drive progress towards development goals. Economic impact will primarily come from expanding revenue pools and attracting foreign direct investment to the country. The sector can unlock a plethora of economic benefits by driving increased fintech productivity, capital, and labour hours through digitization of financial services.
Financial Services
CBN issues framework for QR payments
CBN has issued a framework that would guide Quick response (QR) code payments in Nigeria.
The Central Bank of Nigeria has issued the framework that would guide Quick Response (QR) Code Payments in Nigeria.
This is a proactive move by the Apex bank towards ensuring the safety and stability of the Nigerian Financial System, as well as promoting the use and adoption of electronic payments and foster innovation in the payments system.
READ: Over 1 million people took loans from banks below 20% interest rate in 1 year- CBN
Quick Response (QR) Codes are matrix barcodes representing information presented as square grids, made up of black squares against a contrasting background that can be scanned by an imaging device, processed and transmitted by appropriate technology.
The codes are used to present, capture and transmit payments information across payments infrastructure and further enable the mobile channel to facilitate payments and present another avenue for promoting electronic payments for micro and small enterprises.
READ: Binance offers DeFi coders $100,000; DeFi market value hits $8 billion
What you should know
- Quick Response (QR) codes are two-dimensional bar codes. QR code payments allow merchants to receive payments from customers simply by scanning generated QR codes using a smartphone camera. The QR code payments carry the purchase transaction information to the mobile device of the buyer/customer.
- Making payments via QR codes is very secure. It is because the QR code is nothing but just a tool that is used to exchange information. Any data which is transferred via QR codes is encrypted, thus making the payment secure.
- The Participants in QR Code Payment in Nigeria include Merchants, Customers, Issuers (Banks, MMOs and Other Financial Institutions), Acquirers (Banks, MMOs and Other Financial Institutions) and Payments Service Providers.
- QR payments are increasingly becoming a popular means of payments in Nigeria, and some industry players would see the framework as a perfect way of regulating the sector.
- QR codes are capable of storing lots of data. But no matter how much they contain, when scanned, the QR code should allow the user to access information instantly. It can be used for payments, sharing contacts and Wi-Fi passwords and lots more.
- The popular and common argument is that since POS machines are expensive, cheaper options such as QR scanners should be pushed forward to local traders.
READ: Telecoms, FSI to hugely boost Nigerian Economy in 2021 – CWG’s Business Director
Financial Services
CBN unveils framework for regulatory sandbox operations
CBN has issued a regulatory Sandbox framework towards engaging with the operators in the Fintech space.
Financial Services
Standard Chartered Nigeria Plc crashes ‘personal loans’ interest rate to 1% monthly
The Bank crashed its interest rate to one of the lowest in Nigeria’s lending space.
Standard Chartered Nigeria Plc, has crashed its interest rate for ‘personal overdraft’ from 1.25% to 1% per month, according to information seen by Nairametrics.
Nairametrics understands that this review makes the rate, one of the lowest in Nigeria’s lending space, especially when compared to other players in the industry.
READ: Telecoms, FSI to hugely boost Nigerian Economy in 2021 – CWG’s Business Director
This is a strategic move by the bank as it makes major inroads into Nigeria’s competitive but lucrative retail end of lending. The retail end which includes divisions such as personal loans, payday loans is highly competitive with Fintechs, and other banks all jostling for the same market.
READ: InfraCredit guarantees TSL’s issuance of a N12 billion 10-year Series 1 Infrastructure Bonds
Despite efforts by some of the banks to restructure their loan books due to the adverse effect of the pandemic, banking sector credit to the private sector improved to N19 trillion in the third quarter of 2020 representing a 15.6% increase from 2019.
READ: Nigeria’s GDP growth to rebound between 1.7% and 2.0% in 2021 – United Capital report
Notably, according to a CBN survey on credit conditions as reported by Nairametrics, supply of secured and unsecured credits to households is expected to increase in the first quarter of 2021, having recorded an increase in the previous quarter (Q4 2020).
Meanwhile, a cursory review of lending data on the websites of some sampled financial institutions, revealed that some financial institutions retained or downwardly reviewed their monthly interest rate on payday loans. For example, GT Bank Quick credit crashed its rate from 1.75% to 1.33%.
READ: Over 1 million people took loans from banks below 20% interest rate in 1 year- CBN
Furthermore, UBA Click credit maintained its 1.58% charge, Zenith Bank term loan remained at 2.16%, Renmoney retained its 2.98% interest rate, and a host of others.
READ: Nigeria Fintech startup, CredPal raises $1.5million funding
What you should know:
- According to Standard Chartered, Personal Overdraft facility provided by Standard Chartered Plc is a revolving facility targeted at salaried customers with 12 months tenor and usually based on 50% of the net monthly salary of customers.
- A minimum salary qualification of N50,000 is specified.
