Femi Akinware is the Chief Executive Officer of Tagattitude Nigeria, a subsidiary of Tagattitude France; a technology development company. Akinware has a background in technology markets Tagattitude’s NSDT (Near Sound Data Transfer) technology in Nigeria. He spoke to funmi ilesanmi.
Preparedness for Mobile Money
We are very prepared. We provide technology for mobile payments and mobile banking. We are very prepared because our technology is ready and what we hope to do is to provide mobile money technology and mobile payment technology to people who are licensed, banks, independent providers and telcos.
Possibility of Cards extinction with Mobile Money
I think there are spaces for both. The technologies will reside side by side. Most people who are looking at mobile banking are looking to provide for the unbanked, people who do not have cards today. There are people who are already banked who will continue to use their cards and there are people who do not have accounts now that mobile banking and mobile payments would allow to enter the banking space. Both are channels that will continue to exist.
Mobile Money
What we do at Tagattitude is that we replace the card with the phone so your mobile phone will do all the things a card does today. You will be able to make ATM withdrawals, you will be able to do POS transactions, web transactions, face to face and peer to peer transactions. What we have done is that we have moved all the functionalities of the card to the phone and our technology allows any phone on any network to work the same way a debit car works.
About Tagattitude
Tagattitude is originally a French company that provides mobile banking technology. Tagattitude Nigeria is the partner of Tagattitude France which markets that technology in Nigeria. Our technology is called NSDT- Near Sound Data Transfer. It allows any phone on any network to be used the same way a debit card is used. We use the sound channel of the phone to authenticate transactions, we do audio cryptograms to authenticate transactions and we work on multiple channels- ATMs, PoS terminals and we also have add-ons for existing PoS terminals.
Nigeria’s Setback in e-Payment
In other countries apart from Kenya, you don’t see a lot of countries that are significantly ahead of us in e- Payment. Every bank in Nigeria now has a mobile banking strategy. All of them are going to come on stream sooner than later.
Possibility of Fraud with Mobile Money
It would be attacked just like every other technology would be attacked but I think the banks know that and most people are going to put in place the required security and put in checks and balances into the system. I think ATM fraud gets more bad news than it deserves. The truth about it is that out of the millions of transactions that happen everyday, less than 0.01 per cent of them are prone to this fraud. It is just that if you go to the ATM and you made a successful transaction, you do not tell the public but if you go to the ATM and somebody deducts your money, everybody shout and shout. But I think the ATM fraud rate is a lot less than what people talk about and it has not killed the technology. I am not making excuses for it but I think people realize what the security challenge is and they are going to take that into consideration.
Service Availability
Everyday people make calls successfully. Today I have made like 50 calls and once or twice, it did not go through and I tried again and it went through; so it is not a bad failure rate. There are infrastructural challenges everywhere, when people say it is dependent on the networks and the networks are not reliable but you make calls everyday and the calls are reliable. Those calls go through, once in a while it doesn’t go through but you try again. This is not enough to kill the technology.
Regulating the e-Payment Space
I think there should be a collaboration between the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) over it. However, I think for both of them the extent in which they want to regulate should not go beyond ensuring security and reliability. We should allow free market to determine price, to determine skill, to determine acceptance. I am a firm believer in free market and capitalism and I think that ultimately the market space, the consumer and competition would determine who wins at the end of the day. I do not think the regulator knows what every customer wants, customer will determine what they want but it should not be open such that any Tom, Dick and Harry would come in but as long as there is a stable minimum requirements of reliability, security and fraud issues, people should be allowed to play in the market and the market place would determine who the winner would be.
Outlook of the e-Payment Space
There is a big opportunity for mobile banking in Nigeria. According to the CBN, only 25 per cent of the money in circulation goes through the banking system with most part outside the banking system. If you are able to bring in a significantly higher percentage into the banking system, we would see a lot more activities in our economy. We would see a lot more lending, a lot more business support, a lot more formal economy and our GDP will bring the country hope and achieve its promises.
Acceptability of Mobile Money
When it starts initially, people will test it to see whether it works. When they see that it works, the confidence level would increase gradually until it gets to a point where people begin to use it for their everyday transactions. If it fulfills their needs and help tem do what they were unable to do before, then they would be happy top adopt it. There are security challenges and all of that but it is up to the providers to9 ensure that there is security, there is reliability and once they do that, it is just a matter of being one step ahead of the fraudsters. Our technology for example has a security in place that makes it extremely difficult and expensive to defraud with. If somebody wants to defraud on a Tagattitude technology, the person has to spend a whole loot of money and have a whole lot of penetration into the telcos, the banks and the platform itself. I do not think anybody can successfully hack into our system because he wants to steal N10,000 or N20,000.
Identity Issues
There would be, because how many people in Nigeria have an identity card?
The CBN has set a certain threshold and people will play into that threshold. As time goes on, I think the threshold should increase because where it is now is very low, people do more transactions. If we can use the mobile phone to positively identify people and to authenticate transactions, then your mobile number is a unique identity.
