 Now digital technology has now made it easier to reach more people and enable more transactions in Nigeria and across the globe. Now the critical mass that is financially excluded are also excluded in form of welfare and capacity development. Therefore, there is need for an integrated digital economy approach that is tech-led and directly engages the bottom of the pyramid. While financial inclusion is not an end in itself, it serves as a vital minstrel eliminating systemic poverty and improving communal welfare. Now the new bank is our focus on the show today. Welcome to Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. I am Justin Acadone. Now oil price hits $100 per barrel on Ukraine crisis. President Buhari opened CB and Lafayette branch and lots more rounded up the business week in Nigeria. Take a look. President Mohammed Buhari has inaugurated Lafayette branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria in what the governor, Mr. Godwin Mephile said, was part of his team's determination to take the bank's interventions closer to the people. According to the CBN-Bose, the branch office would also help in the pursuit of CBN's vigorous financial inclusion campaign. Banks and other financial institutions, excluding insurance, contributed $2.3 trillion to the nation's real gross domestic product, GDP, in 2021, up by 10.5% from $2.1 trillion in 2020. Findings from the gross domestic product, GDP, Q4, 2021 report of the National Bureau of Statistics. MBS showed that the contribution of banks and other financial institutions to the real GDP rose slightly by 2 business points to 3.2% from 3.0% in 2020. In spite of the numerous socioeconomic challenges bedeviling the country, the manufacturing sector bounced back to growth with gross domestic product, of 6.5 trillion Naira in 2021, representing 3.35% growth from 6.29 trillion Naira in 2020. The sector had recorded a contraction of 2.75% in 2020 from 6.47 trillion Naira GDP in 2019. The price of crude oil, Brent, has hit the roof at $100 per barrel in the international market, due mainly to the ongoing Ukraine crisis. The price of oil had been predicted to rise to $100 per barrel because of a sustainable increase in demand after the coronavirus pandemic locked down, but it did not. Business news round up. Disruptions within Nigeria's tech space will be further stared as innovation and digital banking makes its way into the fintech community. The market will feature the Ghostmode, which is a unique banking experience that is an industry first. Full digitization processes means that customers on the platform will not only be able to conduct transactions real time, but will also get much needed support online. The Ghostmode feature allows users to transfer funds to beneficiaries or make payment without revealing their identities. Joining us now is Bukala Uluta, the CEO of Stellar's Digital Bank. Many thanks for joining us on Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. Bukala. Thank you for having me, Justin. Yeah, financial inclusion, fintech, that they seem to be the leading talk in financial world these days. Since the COVID-19, it has actually come to stay. So just what has Nigeria actually keyed into this particular new development full time? Nigeria is yet to key in, but it's growing significantly. The fintech on its own, the industry on its own globally, what about 7.3 trillion as at 2021 and it's growing at the CAGR cumulative growth of 27 percent every year up to 2020, since it keeps on growing. The fact that the industry is one that is growing so fast means that it's an industry that Nigeria would also experience a boom in very soon. And we've seen quite a number of research, people that knows that this industry is the next oil boom which we did experience in Africa and in Asia. We've seen a lot of foreign investors that has already positioned themselves. And you can see the likes of the amount of fund that has been coming into the industry. As of 2020, about 1.35 billion came into the industry in Africa. And that's in 2020 and Nigeria took about 50 percent of it together with Kenya. We took about 80 percent and followed by Africa. Then in 2021, the funding increased to over 3 billion, that is over 122 percent. So there has been a projection that more funds will keep coming into the industry. Even this year, there has been more funds coming into the industry majorly because of so many things, so many innovations that are coming in, so many things that people are asking for. And the secret about business is that if you are able to give customers what they want, definitely funds will generally flow into that area. Let me put it now. You know, we had some sort of a pre-chart yesterday. You talked about how most of FinTech products are customer centric. You know, just how would you say the new bank is actually doing in terms of a Nigeria ecosystem and the acceptability and all of that? Yeah, the FinTech industry actually is, the adoption is increasing significantly. This year it has increased to over 65 percent, meaning that in a population average of 65 percent of people, the inhabitant there is already adopting the fact that yes, they have to use any product that is any innovation coming from the FinTech industry. And really, why the FinTech industry is growing so much rapidly is because it's actually a customer focused industry, unlike the traditional banks that focus more on assets. You know, in those days, we focus more on the branches that the customer have, the amount of funds that they have in their balance sheets. These days, the FinTech focus more on the customer. The customer is the asset. You know, there are three reasons why companies or any organization innovate. Either you're innovating to suit your customer, to increase your revenue, or to change your process. Now, FinTech has adopted the customer focus model. So what the FinTech is actually doing is that even what the customers are not saying now, the FinTech industry is able to pick it and say, oh, these individuals, these people are going to need this in the next five years, in the next two years, in the next 10 years. Let's start doing something towards what these people are going to need. And then once people are able to innovate and give it to them, you see that a lot of people are just using it. We've seen a lot of technology coming up. It's a lot of people want this thing. But the industry, beyond even FinTech, technology industry generally, are able to notice or know or research to determine what people are going to be needing in the next one year, what people are going to be needing in the next two years. And the secret of it is that they know that every customer needs speed. They want speed, speed of execution. They want simplicity. They want something that is innovative. They want convenience. They want easy access. And that's what FinTech is all about. And once all this is being done, you'll find that that people are generally accepting or tilting towards the product that the FinTech industry are bringing out. All right, Mokola, we'll come and talk about some of the new innovation or the innovation that are bound in the FinTech, specifically in Nigeria, VisaV, the Ghostmode Banking, and of course, talking about and protecting you know, interest and of course, making sure that your transactions are secure. It's still business insight and plus TV Africa. We still have Mokola in the house. We'll take a quick break and return what's more to stay with us. All right, welcome back. It's still business insight and plus TV Africa. And we still have the CEO of Stellar's Digital Bank. And we were talking about financial inclusion and of course, how Nigerians can actually ensure better transaction confidence and of course, better security. Now, Mokola, not too long ago, there was this talk. It was actually like a new wave in town, Ghostmode Banking. The name alone suggests that something is heeding, something is done in stealth mode or something. Can you explain to us what is Ghostmode Banking and how it has contributed to FinTech and of course financial inclusion in Nigeria? Okay, yeah. I was talking the other time about innovation and now FinTech industry, innovators in the FinTech industry are able to make research and know what people we need in a couple of years ahead and then they innovate. So one of the things that we discovered in a company like in a bank like ours is that we notice that people generally are very careful about their data. They're careful about where their data is going to, where their names is going to, where information about them is going to. They are careful about the fact that they don't want their data to fall into wrong hands. So what happened in this case is that if you are not really sure of the source you are dealing with, it's a unique feature within the FinTech industry that you can use to somehow protect your identity. So you can as well still deal with these people and they won't have access to your data. And it's more or less like a security measure. In the FinTech today, a lot of innovation is coming in and we found out that these innovations are moving at a faster pace than the security architecture that is available. And we found out that if we are not also increasing our security architecture, all the innovation can come down within a second because of possibility of cyber crime. And so FinTech industry, generally, are also investing a lot in security. And this prompted us to be able to do that because these are some of the things that people really want. People really want to do transactions without really revealing their identity, especially when they're not sure of the source, you understand, especially when you don't want people to profile you, maybe because of your status. So you can decide to do, it's your choice, you can decide to do this transaction under the ghost mode feature. And it is actually very, very secure. And it's something that you're not scared of and maybe some sort of leakage in between, by the way. No, there's no leakage in between. What really happened, what people are really bothered about is generally in the FinTech industry, people, we come up with a lot of innovation. And there are people who are also waiting to use this innovation for negative things. You've seen it all around, people do great things and people are waiting. And one of the things we noticed is, oh, are there people that are going to be waiting to use this thing for negative things? And we thought that, okay, what would happen is that we have, whoever is using it, the transactions are residence with the bank. And for any reasons, maybe regulatory or anybody wants to actually get to know what the transaction is about, we would be able to make it available. And if we notice that also with us, we would also be able to know if the transactions also that the person is doing has, is suspicious. So there is a technology back end that would, for us, be able to let us know the kind of transactions that are passing through this. And it is not, there's not going to be any form of leakage during. Let's talk about the future and prospect of FinTech, FinTechs in Nigeria vis-a-vis the financial inclusion. How far would you say the FinTech products and services have reached that to the hinterlands in Nigeria? Okay. Do we still have unbanked communities? Yeah. One of the future or reason why FinTech is actually growing is because of financial inclusion. We have a couple of them. We've talked about customer focus, which is one of them. We have the contactless payment. We even have the regulatory FinTech is also growing in order to be able to help the regulators. We have a technology called the REC Tech. We have other ones like WellTech. We have other, okay, we also have for the cryptocurrency payment acceptance. Even though a lot of people had thought that it is meant to be used for different purpose, but FinTech is generally working in doing a lot behind to make it more acceptable and to make it known to people that these things can be used for good purpose. So for financial inclusion, the advent of the blocking technology is also helping the FinTechs to be able to reach the interland, to be able to reach those places that there are no infrastructure or financial services are not happening there. Because of the blocking technology, we have an open source data that is that tech firms can use, can plug into their device and be able to do use for banking data. I know it's just like, if I'm going to explain it, it's just like a goggle sheet. If you share a goggle sheet with anybody, whenever anybody is making an update, it synchronizes and the update is going in in real time. So that's how the blocking technology works. Different FinTech companies can plug into this open source data, decentralize or made available by the blockchain. So that's why we've been able to see the increase in agency banking. So we've seen several devices that are very small, portable or even mobile devices that people can plug in into into account because we don't have, because it is expensive for banks to put their branches in these places or build a certain infrastructure. FinTech has made it more possible to provide infrastructure that doesn't cost much to put in these areas. And the people who don't have access to banks, who don't have access to financial services, are able to just go to somewhere within their vicinity or within their area and do their banking transactions. We've seen that this technology has been able to help people to save, to transfer money, to do all kinds of financial transactions. And gradually it is helping to reduce the number of people that are unbanked. In 2008, the percentage of people that are excluded from financial transaction is about 53% of Nigerian population. In 2010, it reduced to about 47%. In 2020, we had a target that we should reduce it down to 20%. But we were only able to reduce it to about 36%. And with the increase in the rate of FinTech, especially because of these mobile devices that are going into different areas now, we should be able to meet this target. By 2024, CBN is expecting that we should be able to reduce the number of people that are excluded from financial transaction to 5%. With this, with more innovation coming in, we should be able to achieve this. All right, just before we wrap this all up, Nasa, I just want to know in terms of feedback, what sort of acceptability are you getting with the ghost mode and banking feature? Yeah, there's a lot of acceptability. Just as I told you before, if you are able to make an innovation of what people really want, you are able to extract their expectation ahead. So when you build a technology around these people's expectation, what you generally get is acceptability. And we've seen that in a lot of mobile technology, a lot of the GSM, we've seen what Apple is doing. Even before Apple released another brand of their phone, we've seen people killing at their doorstep because they are able to determine what people need. And when it is out, generally people, oh, this is what I've been waiting for. This is what I've been expecting. Oh, so someone can actually do this for us. You know, just like you are sitting there, you are thinking of how can I do a cross-brother payment without going to the bank or without living where I am. Just on my device, I just want to make payment to any country of the world. And Fintech has been able to make this done. We've seen a lot of people that ask this question. And Fintech has been able to give answers to these people. And that is why the adoption is increasing rapidly. All right. We must say a very big thank you for joining us today to talk about innovation in Fintech. And of course, I'm the Ghost Mode Banking, which is an industry first-hand by you. We do appreciate your time. And we wish you the best in all of that. Thank you very much. Thank you again for having me. All right. Bukola is the CEO of Stellar's Digital Bank. And he has joined us to look at the way forward. And of course, all of the successes and prospects for financial inclusion in Nigeria. And just before we go, I will leave you with this. More than 13 months since the signing of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement, the president of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Mansoor Ahmed, says, their husband's significant progress made in implementation. Now, Ahmed made this note on the sidelines of the 2022 edition of the Man Reporters of the Year Award and Presidential Media Luncheon. My name is Justin Akademi. We'll return again next time. Bye for now. Despite the fantastic surprise speed of progress in 2020, the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement, AFCFTA, seems to be losing the momentum it gained among African leaders at the very time its importance is recognized elsewhere. However, the president of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, engineer Mansoor Ahmed, believes the agreement still holds a bright future for Africa and Nigeria. Although he agrees that policies need to be made faster, engineer Mansoor identifies the need to address issues including the rule of origin and the need to set up institutions to manage the processes involved. There have been negotiations which were intended to agree the detailed terms of the various protocols. For instance, you know the agreement says across Africa 90% of all custom tariffs will be reduced over a period of time to zero. Another 7.5% which are supposed to be sensitive to different countries will also be reduced, I think, over a period of time. And lastly, there is a remaining 2.5% of tariff items that each country regards as very, very critical to their economic well-being and those 2.5% of tariffs will not be changed. Mansoor also speaks on the need to train stakeholders like the Nigeria Custom Service, the standards organization of Nigeria SOEN and the private sector in order to take advantage of the ASCFTA. There will be institutions that will cover, for instance, how the custom services work across the different countries. How do they harmonize the arrangement so that the custom rules in terms of operating rules are not different from Ghana to Nigeria. So all these institutions are in the process of being set up and I believe that a lot of progress has been made in this regard. He expressed the association's commitment to helping members improve quality and efficiency in production to engender competitiveness under the ASCFTA.