The co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flutterwave, Olugbenga Agboola, has said that Nigeria could leverage the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) platform and the National Identification Number (NIN) to build a replica of India Stack for financial inclusion.
India Stack is a set of open APIs and digital public goods that aim to unlock the economic primitives of identity, data, and payments at a population scale.
The project, which was conceptualized and first implemented in India, has seen rapid adoption by billions of individuals and businesses and has helped promote financial and social inclusion and positioned the country for the Internet Age.
While noting that he had a lot of respect for the impressive strides the India Stack has had in driving financial inclusion, Agboola, who is part of Nigerian delegates from the private sector to the G20 Summit in India, said:
- “I believe that using the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) platform NIN as a foundation, we could create our own ‘Nigeria Stack’ to financially include millions of Nigerians.”
Collaboration with India
Sharing his experience from the meetings he has had in India via posts on his X handle, the Flutterwave CEO said:
- “Initiatives like Kola Aina’s driven tech round table in India will also help with a closer and well-defined collaboration between the two countries and could help promote and encourage knowledge sharing, and technology transfer, and enhance the Nigeria-India remittance corridor.
- This proposition is drawn from the need to have more of what Flutterwave does in partnership with leading companies in India like IndusInd Bank and Capgemini India.”
Earlier on Friday, Flutterwave announced its expansion to India after securing a partnership with IndusInd Bank Ltd., a leading financial institution in the Asian nation.
Agboola said the agreement will enable Flutterwave, worth an estimated $3 billion, to expand its remittance product into Asia’s second-biggest economy.
- “The Indian expansion for Flutterwave will be the first African company to do that at a scale where remittances from India to Africa become seamless and quick,” Agboola said.
IndusInd Bank has approximately 35 million customers across the country, including individuals, large corporations, and various government entities, according to information on its website. Flutterwave also secured an agreement with French company Capgemini, an IT service management company it sees as helping strengthen its engineering infrastructure.
What you should know
Agboola accompanied President Bola Tinubu to India for the G20 summit alongside other prominent private sector leaders like Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Tony Elumelu, Alhaji Abdul Sama Rabiu, Femi Otedola, Kola Aina, Allen Onyema, Mitchell Elegbe, and the Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani.
We need a database of citizens and stratified into income groups. It is doable without any visit to any agency. The agency should in fact be the clearinghouse or secretariat.