Through NFC technology, the company is modernizing payment
in the country.
Until recently, all micropayments in Nigeria, that is transactions under 10 dollars, occurred in cash exchanges, allowing no record for transactions, inconveniencing users with securing access to cash in a country that has had cash crises, and costing the government often more to move the cash than the value of the cash itself. This is why indigenous IT company Touch and Pay developed Near Field Communication technology to allow for digital and off-line micropayments between businesses and individuals as well, tackling, according to CEO Olamide Afolabi, a problem that is not only technical: “payment is a social problem, technology is just the medium to solve it, and we have the technology, so we want to help solve this problem for people.”
With 3.5 million customers currently, and a goal of reaching 7 million by the end of 2024, the company is surely in the right track and with the right idea: by leveraging the use of NFC, its services are now widely used not only for transactions which save customers the need to worry about cash, but for communicating ideas, products, services and information through endto-end business solutions including prototyping, production, quality checking and product launches. “We cannot have another cash crisis in Nigeria nor in Africa; we want everybody in Africa to use money more effectively, securely, and intelligently,” adds Mr. Afolabi.
Indeed, with plans of expanding into the rest of the continent, the company’s services have ventured into all systems that can benefit from cashless infrastructure, such as transport, utility payments and grocery shopping, among others. For Mr. Afolabi, the end goal is not just to replace cash, but to create a marketplace in which also foreign investment -a key focus of the new government’s economic agenda- can flow into Nigeria without fear of losing track of expenditure, making sure it goes where it needs to go, and ultimately making business in the country a synonym of transparency, accountability, and profitability. “Our aim is real financial inclusion”, concludes Mr. Afolabi, “improving people’s financial literacy so we all can make better, more informed decisions in the future”.
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