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Fuelvoucher App Offers Convenience, Value For Money- Co-Founders

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Chimezie Emewulu and Chibuzor Onwurah are the managing director and the executive director (Technology) of Seamfix Nigeria Limited respectively and also co-founders of FuelVoucher.com.ng.
Emewulu is a result-oriented leader, reformer and strategist with a comprehensive business and technical background. He is driven by a “hardwired” need to strategize, to innovate and to disprove the words “It cannot be done!” His work over the years has seen him negotiate and drive to business closure various mission- critical projects for brands such as IBM, First Bank, Airtel and Oando.
Onwura is a talented and versatile business and technology executive with over 7 years of sound IT industry experience in business strategy, product development, technology management as well as business process consulting. Like his business partner, Onwurah’s work over the years has seen him oversee the planning, development and execution of projects for brands such as IBM, First Bank, Airtel and Oando.
In line with the cashless initiative of the CBN they co-founded www.fuelvoucher.cm.ng.
In this Interview with peter ugwu, they expatiated on the new developments with the app to make it de-facto cashless method of purchasing petrol and fuel gifting service in Nigeria, with a vision to expand to the rest of Africa.

Defining the FuelVoucher App
FuelVoucher.com.ng was born out of the frustrations our company Seamfix Nig. Ltd faced in dealing with our fueling process as relating to managing drivers, reconciliation of fuel purchases and tracking fueling expenditures.
Prior to the onset of the service, we would have to give our drivers cash or in order to avoid this, depositsome money in a particular stationin order to purchase fuel.
Unfortunately, these options made it very difficult for our admin mangers and accountants to reconcile and monitor the fueling processes because we were limited to paper receipts that could either get missing or damaged.

Factors That Inspired FuelVoucher App
Due to the mentioned constraints, we decided to come up with a solution to help solve our problem; which we also found out was common with companies in Nigeria. We had found a gap in the market that we, as an IT company could solve.
Therefore we decided to create a solution that would efficiently manage our fueling process and save us the hassle of daily reconciliations.
We went on to build FuelVoucher.com.ng to be an efficient means of purchasing fuel on the go without having to deal with cash , cards or paper vouchers.
We built a system that anyone could easily access by signing into FuelVoucher online.
 
Purchasing Fuel Online: What the Public Needs to Know
Getting started with FuelVoucher is pretty easy. The process involves the potential user visiting www.fuelvoucher.com.ng and signing in with a number and email address or downloading the mobile app from the Google play store.
The application gives the customer access to a fuel wallet that can be toped up via a debit card or bank transfer.
Whenever the individual needs to purchase fuel all he/she needs to do is to input the voucher amount and indicate the beneficiary required that is, who he/she wants to purchase for.
An alpha numeric code will then be sent to the beneficiary as a text message and email which can then be taken to the station and presented to the attendant.
The attendant confirms the code on the FuelVoucher device and dispenses fuel to the customers.
 
Offline Users
It is common knowledge that internet connection in Nigeria is not alwaysavailable and due to this, we decided to include an option that would enable customers purchase fuel via the site without necessarily having to log into the internet.
We created a feature called FuelDirect that allows you purchase fuel at the station by inputting a four digit pin into the FuelVoucher device at the station without pre-generating a code on the site.
The pin provided is tied to the customers fuel wallet therefore whenever the customer wants to fuel his vehicles, he simply punches in his/her pin,phone number and voucher amount he wants to purchaseon the FuelVoucher device.
We also have what we call a Sub-account feature that helps companies with large fleetsof cars to allocate a certain amount to their driversinstead of generating codes for all the drivers. The drivers are given a certain allocation that they can fuel from per time.
 
FuelVoucher and Prudent Financial Management
Every transaction that occurs via the site is recorded per time and can be retrieved whenever the customer needs the information.
In order words, from the system you can view the history of all fuel purchases which includes information of who, when and where voucher codes were used, as well as the amount purchased.  When we were building the site, we decided to think about the sort of information an individual would need to be able to effectively manage his fueling both for himself and for a anorganization.

Security Check
FuelVoucher.com.ng is HTTPS secure and hence provides encrypted communication with our servers.
All data inputted by the customer is also encrypted and operations performed are audit trailed. Also, reports of transaction cannot be deleted off the system. Therefore it is impossible for an employee to delete any transaction history to hide fraudulent activities.

FuelVoucher Catchment Areas
For now we have petrol stations as partners who are based in Lagos and Port Harcourt that serve hundreds of our customers.
We are also working hard to expand partnership scope for easier access, availability and efficiency.
We just signed a partnership agreement with Interswitch that will help broaden our coverage to reach most stations across the nation. Every station that has an Interswitch POS would have FuelVoucher available. 

Cases & Causes of Reversal of E-Wallet Payments
Well, we reverse payments in some cases, depending on the genuineness of the complaints.
Nevertheless, we have not experienced a case where a fuel station refused to dispense fuel for a customer after the necessary verifications have been concluded.
However, in a situation whereby a customer miscalculates the voucher amount needed, such transaction can be reversed by the customer.

Developing Features on the App
There cannot be stagnancy in business and as such we are continuously changing and improving features on the site.
We often ask for customer feedback to help us know and understand customer needs in order to make the relevant changes.

Differentiating FuelVoucher from Regular eCommerce Platforms
What we do already sets us apart from others. FuelVoucher is not just an e-commerce platform,
but hopes to actually become a primary fulfillment channel for e-fuel.
We are building a phenomenal solution that will enable people to be able to send fuel around to each other and this will totally change the way people see fuel. During the fuel scarcity quagmire we
noticed that people were searching for alternate ways to make purchases like using the
e-commerce space.
In the light of this discovery, we are now considering delivering fuel to customers in the future. In the real sense, we are not competing with the likes of Jumia, Konga,
Kaymu, etc., rather we are partnering with oil marketers to push the business forward. 
 
How Pocket Friendly is the Service Charge?
Presently, the service is offered free of charge to all users. We are running a free-trial period and at the same time, conducting research on how the customers will prefer to be
charged for the service. Our current focus is on enlarging our current customer base.
 
Customer Satisfaction and Channels for Complaints
Any business that has a future must have listening ears, therefore we have put in place a proficient Customer Service system.As a startup, it is not just enough to have customer service in place, availability and accessibility make the circle complete. We have available contact lines, are active on social media and ensure to treat our customers with dignity.

Gifts and Incentives
We encourage our customers to send Fuel Vouchers as gifts to loved ones especially during festive seasons.
Studies have shown that in Nigeria, fuel is one of the most valued commodities and as such we also market FuelVoucher to companies to be given out as promo gifts to their customers or as incentives to staff that have distinguished themselves.

Impact of Internet Access and Broadband Availability
We are excited that internet penetration in the country continues on upward trends. The
Government is beginning to realize that broadband should be regarded as a social amenity.
Therefore, the best incentive government can offer SMEs, especially those in the e-commerce
Sub-sector is to provide infrastructure that will enable more broadband availability and access.  
 
 
 
 
       


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EAIF Commits Additional US$30M to Support Indorama’s Expansion with Third Urea Plant in Nigeria

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The Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), a Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company, has committed a US$30 million senior debt facility to Indorama, a leading producer and exporter of fertiliser.

The investment enables the construction of a new plant, port terminal, handling stations, and storage facilities in Nigeria, providing a major boost for the country’s agricultural sector, which is a crucial driver of the country and region’s economic growth.

EAIF acted as a co-lender within a broader debt financing package arranged by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), mobilising US$1.25 billion from a syndicate of impact investors, development finance solutions, and commercial banks.

EAIF’s investment increases the Fund’s lending to the company to $111 million, reflecting a joint-ambition to accelerate Indorama’s growth strategy and Nigeria’s aspirations for diversification and industrialisation.

The new funding unlocks fresh capital to enable the construction of a dedicated port terminal and state-of-the-art urea fertiliser plant, anticipating an increase in its current capacity from 2.8 million metric tons to 4.2 million metric tons per annum.

The expansion leverages the company’s strategic location as a freight-competitive supplier serving the needs of significant urea markets in the southern Atlantic, including Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, as well as West Africa, South Africa and the USA.

The facility bolsters Indorama’s capacity, extending its complex beyond the current two urea fertiliser plants, which is well poised to meet the entire demand of the Nigerian market.

The third urea plant aims to maximise output to meet the food demands of growing populations as disruptions precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis affect food security around the globe.

Global crop production is reliant on the international supply of fertiliser. The landmark project is expected to position Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, as a leading producer of urea among the top 10 producers worldwide.

Contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 9 on Decent Work and Economic Growth, and Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, EAIF’s loan forms part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) objective for new infrastructure to drive action on climate and nature.

The construction of the port terminal and third plant is set to begin in 2024, with commercial operations expected to commence in 2026. During the construction phase, it is estimated that over 500 jobs will be generated, further contributing to economic development in Nigeria and beyond.

Commenting on the transaction, Olivia Carballo, Managing Director, Emerging Market, Fixed Income at Ninety One, the fund manager of the EAIF, said: “Our continued support for Indorama demonstrates EAIF’s commitment to harnessing the region’s significant economic prospects.

Africa’s potential for industrialisation is tremendous, and this landmark project is a testament to Nigeria’s enhanced ability to produce and export competitively priced, high-quality fertiliser to farmers in regional and international markets, which will remain a priority for years to come.”

Munish Jindal, CEO, Indorama, said: “Indorama will utilise state-of-the-art technology and adhere to stringent environmental standards to ensure optimal efficiency, product quality and sustainability.

We believe that the establishment of this fertiliser will position Nigeria as a key player in the global agricultural market. We are committed to maximising the potential of this project to benefit farmers, communities, and stakeholders across the value chain.

The involvement of esteemed lenders like the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund will not only help Nigeria’s in becoming one of the largest exporter of the fertilisers in the region but will also address the issues of global food security. We extend our sincere appreciation to all our partners, lenders, and stakeholders for their unwavering support and dedication to our shared vision.”

Sérgio Pimenta, IFC Vice President for Africa, said: “Reliable access to high quality fertiliser is essential for food production and food security around the world. IFC’s investment in Indorama, along with African, Asian, European, and American partners, signals our joint commitment to support the agriculture sector, Nigeria’s economy, and the expansion of Indorama, an important supplier in the global food chain.”


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Lifi.net Achieves 500mbps Speed to Rank among Fastest Internet Providers in Nigeria

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Lifi.net, a fast-growing internet service provider, has attained internet speed that is many times faster than the documented average internet speed in Nigeria as at January 2024.

Lifi.net Image

Latest disclosure by LIfi.net shows that the company now delivers up to 500 megabits per seconds (mbps) internet speed in unlimited services provided to homes and offices. This is higher than the country’s average internet speed of 26.74mbps.

As internet subscriber base increases in Nigeria and hit 161.68 million in January, the quality of internet service provided by operators to their users still constitutes concerns as 2G network which has limited speed dominates the space by covering 57.78%.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed through its latest data that while 3G is responsible for 9.36% of internet users in the country, 4G covers 31.75% of internet access and 5G internet only serves 1.11% of internet users in the country.

This combination explains why Nigeria ranked 93rd on the global mobile internet speed test out of 144 countries tested by Ookla, a U.S-based internet speed analysis firm, in January, putting the country’s median internet speed at 26.74 megabits per second (mbps).

However, Lifi.net (NT/007/22), a licensee of NCC, is among few Internet service providers (ISPs) that deliver fastest internet speed in Nigeria with up 350mbps for homes and 2500mbps for offices while assisting new ISPs with speeds over 5000mbps at the data centre and delivering the capacity to their various hubs at no extra cost.

“For over five years Lifi.net has been a leading network company, providing quality internet solutions at the speed of light and at affordable rates. We have highly technical and hard-working personnel and partners. We are very skilled at managing Cisco and Mikrotik Routers’ deployment, configurations, and integrations, fibre laying, and splicing,” says Abraham Oluwambe, Chief Operating Officer of Lifi.net.

He added that as operators attract more subscribers to their respective networks, they should equally place a premium on upgrading the quality of services to deliver broadband at the fastest internet speed possible.

“Our services are not only widespread but also affordable. We believe in making quality connectivity accessible to all. We understand the importance of budget-friendly solutions. Our cost-effective broadband plans ensure you get the best value for your investment without compromising on quality.

“While providing high-speed and reliable broadband connectivity, operators may choose the floor or the peak performance of its service. At Lifi.net, we always go for the latter,” he said.


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Our 2023 Ads Safety Report

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By Duncan Lennox, VP & GM of Ads Privacy and Safety

Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem. Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet.

The key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI. This new technology introduced significant and exciting changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. Of course, generative AI also presents new challenges. We take these challenges seriously and will outline the work we are doing to address them head-on.

Just as importantly, generative AI presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly. Our teams are embracing this transformative technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), so that we can better keep people safe online.

Gen AI Bolsters Enforcement 

Our safety teams have long used AI-driven machine learning systems to enforce our policies at scale. It’s how, for years, we’ve been able to detect and block billions of bad ads before a person ever sees them. But, while still highly sophisticated, these machine learning models have historically needed to be trained extensively – they often rely on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of examples of violative content.

LLMs, on the other hand, are able to rapidly review and interpret content at a high volume, while also capturing important nuances within that content. These advanced reasoning capabilities have already resulted in larger-scale and more precise enforcement decisions on some of our more complex policies. Take, for example, our policy against Unreliable Financial Claims which includes ads promoting get-rich-quick schemes. The bad actors behind these types of ads have grown more sophisticated. They  adjust their tactics and tailor ads around new financial services or products, such as investment advice or digital currencies, to scam users.

To be sure, traditional machine learning models are trained to detect these policy violations. Yet, the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of financial trends make it, at times, harder to differentiate between legitimate and fake services and quickly scale our automated enforcement systems to combat scams. LLMs are more capable of quickly recognizing new trends in financial services, identifying the patterns of bad actors who are abusing those trends and distinguishing a legitimate business from a get-rich-quick scam. This has helped our teams become even more nimble in confronting emerging threats of all kinds.

We’ve only just begun to leverage the power of LLMs for ads safety. Gemini, launched publicly last year, is Google’s most capable AI modeI. We’re excited to have started bringing its sophisticated reasoning capabilities into our ads safety and enforcement efforts.

Our Work to Prevent Fraud and Scams

In 2023, scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise. Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.

  • In November, we launched our Limited Ads Serving policy, which is designed to protect users by limiting the reach of advertisers with whom we are less familiar. Under this policy, we’ve implemented a “get-to-know-you” period for advertisers who don’t yet have an established track record of good behavior, during which impressions for their ads might be limited in certain circumstances–for example, when there is an unclear relationship between the advertiser and a brand they are referencing. Ultimately, Limited Ads Serving, which is still in its early stages, will help ensure well-intentioned advertisers are able to build up trust with users, while limiting the reach of bad actors and reducing the risk of scams and misleading ads.

  • A critical part of protecting people from online harm hinges on our ability to respond to new abuse trends quickly. Toward the end of 2023 and into 2024, we faced a targeted campaign of ads featuring the likeness of public figures to scam users, often through the use of deepfakes. When we detected this threat, we created a dedicated team to respond immediately. We pinpointed patterns in the bad actors’ behavior, trained our automated enforcement models to detect similar ads and began removing them at scale. We also updated our misrepresentation policy to better enable us to rapidly suspend the accounts of bad actors.

Overall, we blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy, which includes many scam tactics and 273.4 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy. We also blocked or removed over 1 billion advertisements for violating our policy against abusing the ad network, which includes promoting malware.

The fight against scam ads is an ongoing effort, as we see bad actors operating with more sophistication, at a greater scale, using new tactics such as deepfakes to deceive people. We’ll continue to dedicate extensive resources, making significant investments in detection technology and partnering with organizations like the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and Stop Scams UK to facilitate information sharing and protect consumers worldwide.

Investing in Election Integrity

Political ads are an important part of democratic elections. Candidates and parties use ads to raise awareness, share information and engage potential voters. In a year with several major elections around the world, we want to make sure voters continue to trust the election ads they may see on our platforms. That’s why we have long-standing identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers, as well as restrictions on how these advertisers can target their election ads. All election ads must also include a “paid for by” disclosure and are compiled in our publicly available transparency report. In 2023, we verified more than 5,000 new election advertisers and removed more than 7.3M election ads that came from advertisers who did not complete verification.

Last year, we were the first tech company to launch a new disclosure requirement for election ads containing synthetic content. As more advertisers leverage the power and opportunity of AI, we want to make sure we continue to provide people with the greater transparency and the information they need to make informed decisions.

Additionally, we’ve continued to enforce our policies against ads that promote demonstrably false election claims that could undermine trust or participation in democratic processes.

Overall 2023 Numbers

Our goal is to catch bad ads and suspend fraudulent accounts before they make it onto our platforms or remove them immediately once detected. AI is improving our enforcement on all these fronts. In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. Similarly, we work to protect advertisers and people by removing our ads from publisher pages and sites that violate our policies, such as sexually explicit content or dangerous products. In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022. We are also getting better at tackling pervasive or egregious violations. We took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, up markedly from 2022.

To put the impact of AI on this work into perspective: last year more than 90% of our publisher page level enforcement started with the use of machine learning models, including our latest LLMs. Of course, any advertiser or publisher can still appeal an enforcement action if they think we got it wrong. Our teams will review it and, in the cases where we find errors, use it to improve our systems.

Staying Nimble and Looking Ahead

When it comes to ads safety, a lot can change over the course of a year: the introduction of new technology such as generative AI to novel abuse trends and global conflicts. And the digital advertising space has to be nimble and ready to react. That’s why we are continuously developing new policies, strengthening our enforcement systems, deepening cross-industry collaboration and offering more control to people, publishers and advertisers.

In 2023, for example, we launched the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable hub of all ads from verified advertisers, which helps people quickly and easily learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Display. We also updated our suitability controls to make it simpler and quicker for advertisers to exclude topics that they wish to avoid across YouTube and Display inventory. Overall, we made 31 updates to our Ads and Publisher policies.

Though we don’t yet know what the rest of 2024 has in store for us, we are confident that our investments in policy, detection and enforcement will prepare us for any challenges ahead.


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