 Welcome back. The significant rise in the value of electronic transactions in the fourth three months of this year relative to the corresponding period of last year showed a whole lot of differences now. The CBN's initiative to redesign the Naira bills and reduce the amount of physical currency in circulation also affected it. With respect to other payments channels, the Mobile Interskim channel delivered the fastest 209% year on year to 4.1 trillion Naira. However, in terms of absolute value, it fell significantly behind the value of NIP's transactions. A joining me right now is Victoria Akanem, a business leader with experience in accelerating profitable growth for businesses. She is a senior executive in a fintech company overseeing daily business operations, business performance and growth, senior team and across the departmental goal alignment, ensuring execution and implementation of strategies and investors' management amongst other functions right now. She is the head of business operations at Strunkup or Traction Apps Ltd. Many thanks for joining me, Victoria, on Business Insights. Thank you for having me. I hope that seems to be happening with the digital economy. Impressive figures were saying E-payment increased to 48.3 in March. First of all, what's your first thought about that? I mean when I think about the rise in E-payment value, remember that in Q1 of 2023 was when the cashless policy went into, we enacted the cashless policy, right? So that cashless policy is the main reason why we would have a spike. I mean you probably ask how, what are the reasons why? I mean you have the banked population in Nigeria and these people are familiar with, you know, electronic payment solutions and tools. So when you take cash out, it means these people are forced to use these solutions and these tools that they have available to them. However, the unbanked population, I mean the World Bank statistics says that we have about 36.8% adults on banks in Nigeria. That was in 2017. However, in 2021, you know, it says that we have 42 million unbanked adults. That's really high. That's high. So imagine taking cash away from 42 million Nigerian adults and forcing them, I mean these unbanked people will now have to, they don't have access to bank accounts. They'll have to open bank accounts, you know, not necessarily bank accounts. Some of them will use solutions, you know, made available to them by fintech companies that we have out there today. You know, it gives them these same tools. So they will have to put this together. They're forced to make use of their ATM cards and other e-payment solutions. And that all together, you know, will just cause the spike in e-payments, right? This doesn't mean, let me put this out there. It doesn't mean that, you know, there's increase in, you know, the earning power of the citizens. I mean, considering the cost of living, you know, increase, right? But it means that when you have people, you know, make use of these tools available to them, it causes, this is the cost for the spike. Alright, Victoria, you would also agree with me that in the first quarter, Q1 2023, actually exposed the banks and some of the issues they had, because we had lots of unfilled transactions. And many Nigerians had to resort to other payment solutions. And some fintechs were actually becoming very popular during that period, because if you try doing the U.S.S.D., sometimes it failed. You don't even get a settlement. Yes, and of course, you tried the ATM card. Sometimes it also failed. But most people are now doing some other forms. I don't understand, mentioned in Brandt and all of that. So what does that really tell you? So it tells me that there's an opportunity for the players in this field, in this sector. There's an opportunity for us to get better. There's an opportunity for us to invent and innovate, right? I mean, when the cash transfer policy went into play, we saw that people had to resort, a lot more had to resort to using the mobile payment method. And the mobile payment guides were funny at the time, increasing their fee. Their fees, yes. I mean, that's put all that together. You go to the mobile guy, you want to take out $20,000, and he's telling you you have to give him $25,000. He has to take out $25,000. That spirals down to increasing the cost of living. A market woman goes to take money from him, and she would need to spread the amount that she's lost to how much she sells her product. It increases food price. It increases the cost of transportation, ETC, ETC. So it means that there's an opportunity for us to do better. The telcos come into play here also. It's an opportunity for them to... The reasons why the transactions will fail are a number of reasons. The telcos, like I said, and also the tech companies themselves, we're talking about needs, ETC, and all the players in this field. There's an opportunity for everyone to put all hands on there, get better, innovate, invent, and get solutions out there that are fast. The developed countries are going way ahead of us. And we need to catch up. We really need to catch up. And so we do. And interestingly, the policy would be back again, as in with the mopping up of this, the old news, it is by December 31st, Nigerians are expecting a similar development that happened in the first quarter. So what do you really think? Look, there are opportunities there. Okay, and no threats. Right? There are threats. There are threats. Yes. I thought of the opportunities. All right. Yeah. So the opportunities are, I mean, who will benefit from a cashless policy in a nation? I mean, first, the financial institutions would definitely benefit. I mean, I mentioned earlier that you have those that are the bank and the unbanked. If you have everyone creating accounts, it means new accounts, new customers for the banks, right? I mean, when I say financial institutions, I mean, you know, the DMBs, the deficit money banks, and the fintechs, right? So you have new customers for them, right? You also have a situation where the new customers come in through the funnel and that goes, it trickles down into, you know, them having more active customers. And when you have more active customers, it means that the TPD, right, the volume increases. You have more customers doing a lot more, you know, e-transactions and the volume increases. And that means more profit for them. And if, I mean, if the financial institutions are making more money, it's good news for the shareholders. It's good news for the investors, people that are looking to invest or people that have already, you know, invested, right? So that is for the financial institutions. You also have business owners. You know, a cashless policy also enables the business owners to have seamless, to accept payments seamlessly. The fintechs have come in with solutions. They've come in to make it simple and easy for these businesses to access all these tools, right? I mean, the banks have them, but it's not as easy, right, to access and the rules that banks have put in place that they are not willing to wiggle around. You know, the fintechs are not wiggling around, but they're giving them opportunity to access these tools. So it's opportunity for the business owners to, you know, monitor their payments in the businesses and less theft. You know, when you don't have cash moving around, there's less theft, right? There's also the telcos, you know, when the telcos, when this, you're doing more e-payments, e-transactions, you're receiving a lot, you know, the telcos are making their fee, right? And they also power, the telcos also power, you know, these tools that we use for... Inasmuch as we have issues right now, I was going to talk about challenges right now, because right now there are issues between the banks and the telcos over USSB debt and all of that. Right. I mean, you know, that, that is as long as there's money in play, that topic will still be out there, you know. But, I mean, it's easy for us to, you know, navigate around it and all of that. I mean, pushing forward to, the telcos also still have an opportunity to, you know, the telcos power, the tools that are used for e-payments. Yes, they do. It's an opportunity for them to get, get it right. I mean, there's so much money out there. And I will mention the threats. Okay. Very, very quickly, yeah. Very quickly, if you have the threats, the threats are cyber security. I'm just going to... We need to be secure. We need to innovate and invent around cyber security because it's another people, you know, identity theft, ETC, ETC. That is going to be on the spike. Okay. Right. All right. So as before we go, now I just need to get one more question in. Just wrap up. Now, we talked about how we have so much on banter, you know, public in Nigeria. How do we begin to address that? Where do the fintechs come in? So, you know, earlier that we introduced the mobile payment method. Right. And I think this mobile, you know, money method is an opportunity for us to, for the fintechs, you know, to get into those communities that are on banks. Okay. Right. Because it's just easy for an individual to go out there with the, you know, the tools required and, you know, just sign people up, you know, get them, you know, accounts that they need, get them the tools and get them up to speed. All right. And, you know, financial inclusion is very much on its way in the country. All right. I must say a very big thank you to you, Victoria. I wish we had more time to talk because this particular industry is very big and, of course, the opportunities are really massive. But then again, thank you so much for the useful insight that you have brought to the show today. Thank you. We do appreciate it. All right. That's the size of the show for today. Business Insights will return again on Monday. My name is Justin Acadone. Many thanks for being a part of the show. See you again next time. Bye for now.