Mr. Yele Okeremi, Managing Director of Precise Financial Systems (PFS), has said that unless the Nigerian government pays attention to the trends and developments in the country’s fintech ecosystem, the growth would be limited.
Speaking during his appearance on C-Suite Café, a podcast hosted by veteran journalist and brand strategist Ikem Okuhu, Okeremi said that only the government can provide the necessary leverage for the sector to become global leaders.
Citing the example of China, he said it took the country’s government to push its local payment platform to become one of the prime payment gateways in the world.
“If we are going to achieve the kind of goals that I have in mind, then, naturally, the government must take certain positions. Take a look at Union Pay today. UnionPay started as China UnionPay. But today, Union Pay cards are accepted everywhere in the world. It was not magic. It happened as a result of the deliberate strategy of the Chinese government. The card business was dominated by Mastercard and Visa. American Express was popular in the United States. But today, Union Pay have become global. So, why couldn’t Verve have become global?”
The fintech guru said the people behind Verve had a sellable technology, but could not withstand the headwinds of global competition. He decried the situation where Nigeria uses cards issued by foreign companies for local payments
“Who does the kinds of things we do here? For local payments, we are issuing Mastercard and Visa when we have Verve? I think these are issues that we need to take a look at,” he stated.
Nigeria, he observed, has all it takes to take its fintech products global, and the government should pay greater attention to ensure this becomes a reality.
“We have a huge market here, and we have the resources. The assets for creating wealth are the market and the natural resources. Nigeria has both. But the private sector can do so much, but until the government provides the needed support and policy leverage, the private sector will achieve limited successes, and until you have the support of your sovereign, you will never be able to fly,” Okeremi canvassed.
He lamented the situation whereby people who have never been involved in wealth creation populate the country’s political leadership space, and advocated a reversal to a system in which certain critical political leadership positions are reserved for certain prequalified people deemed to have a proven track record of success in those fields.
Okeremi disagreed with the notion that some of the fintech companies labelled unicorns are Nigerian companies, saying that most of them had pivoted to foreign ownership because of their desire to scale and attract funding.
For instance, I am one of the founding fathers of Interswitch, and ordinarily, had the environment done what was needed to have been done, Interswitch would have blossomed. But they recognised that the environment was not giving them what they wanted, so they took the easy way to get value – have alliances and sell to foreign interests. But that’s not what I have fought for, and I am not going to blame anybody who has done that. I doubt if I should, because I might be able to withstand the pressures which they cannot.
“But the question is, ‘should we continue on this trajectory as a people? It is a picture of people who are going nowhere, and that trajectory must reverse. We must realise that we can do anything that anybody anywhere in the world can do, and even if we do not have the capacity at this particular point in time, we have more than enough capacity to learn and understudy and replicate,” he submitted
He also advocated for the government to pick outstanding Nigerian fintech players and push them into the global space through deliberate creation of narratives that will engender global acceptance.
He advocated that Nigeria should seek the entrenchment of the leadership that understands that the true meaning of wealth is not cash but the capacity to create from nothing.
