By Aduragbemi Omiyale
A Nigerian financial technology company (fintech), Interswitch Group, is a gold sponsor of the foremost Africa Fintech Summit (AFTS) taking place this year in Nairobi, Kenya from September 4-6, 2024.
The co-founder of the programme, Mr Zekarias Amsalu, said, “It is with immense gratitude and great delight that we welcome Interswitch as the gold sponsor for the Africa Fintech Summit in Nairobi this year.
“It’s warming to have Interswitch grace the big stage this year and share detailed insights, trends and expert perspectives as a revered player in the African Payments Space.
“After two decades of building innovative African payment solutions for most payment touchpoints across the continent, we are deeply humbled to have Interswitch’s wealth of experience at this year’s summit. This is particularly important because it fits into our 2024 AFTS in Nairobi theme Fintech in Every Industry, underscoring our expectation that in the mobile-first continent of Africa, we will see fintech penetrating through all industries.
“All sectors stand to benefit from being powered and served by fintechs – including insurance, saving & investments, cross-border trade, e-commerce, mobile money and digital banking, utilities, mining, trade, healthcare, and education.
“We will also see non-fintech companies leapfrogging digitally and providing these services embedded in their own product offerings as many service providers have done across the continent.”
Commenting on the sponsorship, the chief executive of Interswitch, Mr Mitchell Elegbe, said, “As an Africa-focused integrated digital payments and commerce leader, and an important gateway to Africa’s fintech ecosystem, we are extremely delighted to support ecosystem engagement and valuable thought-leadership through the platform of the Africa Fintech Summit.”
He said 22 years ago, “We set out, with a clear vision to solve social problems, starting by digitizing the use of cash. Today, on the realization of the tremendous transformative potential of technology to create value and unlock prosperity for Africa, we’ve set our sights on leveraging technology and innovation to digitize transactions and unlock value in other key social service sectors, just as we continue to do in the sphere of financial services, and we are excited to see that our roadmap and perspective aptly align with the theme of this year’s AFTS.”
Since its first summit in 2018, the Africa Fintech Summit has become the largest annual financial technology gathering on the African continent.
Interswitch commenced operations in 2002 in Nigeria and has remained at the forefront of driving innovation in the financial technology and digital payments industry, facilitating payments and leveraging innovative technology solutions to shape the future of trade and digital commerce in Africa.
As one of the pioneers of digital payment innovation in Africa, Interswitch, at its inception, disrupted the traditional cash-based payments value chain in Nigeria by supporting the introduction of electronic payment processing and switching services. It also launched Verve, Africa’s premier and leading domestic EMV-standard chip and pin payments card scheme, which has controlled more than 50 per cent of the Nigerian card market.