Oladipo Omogbenigun, the Vice President, OPay, Payments Solutions and Corporate Partnerships, revealed plans of the leading payment and financial service company to launch debit cards in 2021.
The OPay Senior Executive who provided insights into the growth plans of the payment company in 2021 and beyond at a press conference in Lagos, revealed that the Opay debit cards were conceived out of the need to bolster the gospel of financial inclusion.
Omogbenigun stressed that the debit cards which will be launched this year is a vital product of the company targetted at increasing transactions on the Opay platform.
The cards which are the first of their kind will be directly linked to Opay wallets, and when launched, the product is expected to afford individuals with Opay wallet the luxury of using their cards on ATMs, POS terminals at merchant locations and e-commerce sites.
Innovative solutions and loan products launched by Opay
Omogbenigun revealed that access to savings and loans is the critical step in true financial inclusion beyond access to cash. In this line, he said Opay recently launched a standardised loan product to its agents and merchants based on an established relationship
He noted that Opay has launched a CreditMe platform, which gives easy access to credit to all wallet users at the point of purchase.
The VP, Product and Engineering, Dotun Adekunle reveals plans to empower offline payments and also encourage online businesses. While speaking on plans to ensure higher network availability on Opay systems, he said:
“We have innovatively built technological workarounds to ensure higher network availability on our systems without compromising speed and quality of service, this despite ecosystem challenges that would have led to incessant downtimes”.
Adekunle noted that the goal of the company is to make payments integration easy and simple so developers and innovators of digital products can focus on building the core functionality of their products.
Iniabasi Akpan, the Country Manager of the payment company disclosed that OPay is compliant with all CBN regulations and guidelines, adding that the success of the company is based on the customer’s trust as a payment and financial services provider.
In his words, he said:
“In developing and deploying our products and services and in all our operations, we strive to comply with the regulatory frameworks and guidelines as well circulars issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) including Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and transaction monitoring as well as Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) concerning the protection of customers data and privacy.”
Opay to drive growth through strategic partnerships with banks in 2021
Omogbenigun also noted that Opay is looking to drive growth in 2021 and beyond through strategic partnerships with banks, regulators, card schemes, payment processors and other key players in the financial ecosystem
He explained that the partnership scheme will help to leverage the efficiency of the products and services developed by the team, and this will to help scale deposits up by many folds this year.
In a bid to create a clear picture of the need for these strategic partnerships, he explained that the need to safeguard its wallets deposits with established banks made this a necessary step towards growth and dominance in the industry.
What you should know
- OPay launched its mobile payment service in August 2018, creating an infrastructure on which the company is now also adding new services.
- The agent-centric mobile payment operation focuses on reaching the massive unbanked population of Nigeria.
- OPay’s vision is to rapidly support the realisation of Nigeria’s vision for financial inclusion for everyone through the use of global-leading technology.
