By Nnamdi Odumody

Moven is a digital banking platform for the future which utilizes Near Field Communication technology provided through contact stickers placed on smartphones, allowing users to pay for goods and services in the U.S through MasterCard. Its customers can monitor their financial health through its solutions which include CRED Score, Money Pulse, Money Path and a financial personality test.

Moven offers an innovative technology platform which includes a suite of easy-to-use APIs and a Software Development Kit (SDK), which global banks use to attract, retain and grow their customer base. This technology is proven to significantly reduce attrition, deepening customer relationships and help drive new revenue streams for financial institutions.

Moven provides users with contextual personalized advice as part of the e-wallet mobile app experience. Analyzing the expenses daily, the service allows users to track their spending in real time while reducing spending and increasing savings—all to drive financial wellness and good financial habits. An automated tool for tracking spending and encouraging savings provides a way for banks to place themselves on the side of their customers.

It enables email and text payments even if the receiver is not an account holder. It has a network of over 42,000 ATMs where one can withdraw cash without any fees.

Its enterprise stack helps banks reduce attrition rates, drive new revenue streams and lower the cost of customer acquisition. Utilizing AI, banks are provided with an advice driven personalized financial wellness experience to better engage, retain and grow their customer relationships. Banks and third party data is translated into real time advisory for customers.

Customers unique spending and savings habits are mastered as they interact with their banks smart app powered by Moven. These are used to determine future financial wellness and engagement prompts such as spending list.

Moven offers a range of Open APIs for any bank to quickly and easily integrate its technology, enabling them to gain faster speed to market to support smart intelligent banking into an existing app.

Nigerian banks should through its country representative Inlaks Computers integrate Moven where necessary to deepen the banking customer experience for the future.

Donald Trump, U.S. President, signed an Executive Order to deepen the United States’ cybersecurity workforce. Fortune newsletter summarizes it thus:

The order laid a number of sorely needed federal initiatives. Among them: standardizing job listings to help cybersecurity workers more easily move around government, creating a rotational employment program between the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, establishing awards for elementary and secondary school educators who foster cybersecurity talent, and incentivizing people to learn and master hacking skills through new “awards and decorations.”

Perhaps the most interesting part of the document called for a “president’s cup cybersecurity competition.” The goal, the directive states, “shall be to identify, challenge, and reward the United States Government’s best cybersecurity practitioners and teams across offensive and defensive cybersecurity disciplines.” The order mandates that such a contest, intended for both military and civilians, will take place before the end of the year. Winners are set to earn a minimum cash prize of $25,000.

Specifically, the section on using competition to stimulate young people is brilliant as captured in the Executive Order: “develop a plan for an annual cybersecurity competition (President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition) for Federal civilian and military employees”. Nigeria needs to pick some insights from this policy and create something in that line.

(e)  The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Director of OMB, and the heads of other appropriate agencies, shall develop a plan for an annual cybersecurity competition (President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition) for Federal civilian and military employees.  The goal of the competition shall be to identify, challenge, and reward the United States Government’s best cybersecurity practitioners and teams across offensive and defensive cybersecurity disciplines.  The plan shall be submitted to the President within 90 days of the date of this order.  The first competition shall be held no later than December 31, 2019, and annually thereafter.

I have articulated some policies Nigeria can take to build a strong cybersecurity capability.

In this piece, I had written a whitepaper for Nigeria’s “National Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare Command, NGCYBERCOM”. Yes, you imagine a future and you just write even when no one is paying attention. Provided it is written you have your peace back. Here is the video but the whitepaper is a tome of academic scholarship.

Facebook is planning to make something awesome on cryptocurrency. The company is talking to dozens of financial and e-commerce companies, including Visa and MasterCard, about the cryptocurrency-based payment system it is developing. The scheme carries the codename Project Libra and involves a dollar-pegged virtual currency that could be used for payments between WhatsApp users. Facebook is apparently considering giving users small amounts of the cryptocurrency for looking at ads, Fortune Newsletter summarizes.

I spent the day with Soulmate Industries Limited. Soulmate is the largest wholly indigenous hair beauty brand in sub-Saharan Africa. The Founder and CEO, Chief Sir Ndukwe Osogho-Ajala, is our big fellow FUTOite who took his university project in FUTO to build a multi-billion naira empire. To all of us from FUTO, he remains a legend, offering support. When I set up a shop in Nigeria while a student in the Engineering Lab of the Johns Hopkins University, Soulmate was the first client that prepaid for our services.  Today, Soulmate remains a client – and we are very thankful.  I must confess that I have never seen a better industrial microbiology lab in Nigeria to what I saw today – very brilliant young people building this nation. #BelieveInNigeria

Soulmate Industries Limited (RC 204468), commenced production of hair care products on January 8, 1992.  The company, since its inception a little over two decades ago, has diligently pursued technical excellence and produced high quality products that competes favourably with any brand across the globe.  Over the years, Soulmate has invested heavily in research and this investment has assisted us in gaining public recognition as producer of high quality products.

The redesign is here – Kenya’s mobile network provider, Safaricom, is predicting that revenue from MPESA, its mobile money unit, will generate more than 50% of its revenue by 2022. In other words, MPESA will be bigger than selling airtime and broadband services for the telecom company. That would be a massive inflection point as it does imply that Safaricom has completed a double play strategy: build solid customer base in one area but make money in something else which is tangential.

Driven by a 19 per cent increase in revenues at Mpesa, the company reported annual service revenue of Ks240.3bn ($2.4bn) for the financial year to the end of March, an increase of 7 per cent. The mobile payments platform, which is used by two out of every five Kenyans to send money and pay for goods and services, generated almost a third of total revenues and will surpass 50 per cent in three years, said Mr Collymore.

Telecom services will remain the heart of Safaricom because the promise of MPESA will only ride on the telecom service users. Yes, MPESA derives its life from the users of the telecom services. As I have noted in the One Oasis Strategy, MPESA was engineered to make the telco service better by providing incentives for users to choose Safaricom network. But soon, MPESA is emerging as a great product that will anchor the company into the deep future.

Do you know the company that is making Samsung greater? Apple. Yes, that arch-rival is also the company that is feeding into the profitability of Samsung. As I explained in the One Oasis Strategy, there are just few firms in the world that can meet the quality and scale Apple needs. One of those firms is also the main competitor in Apple’s core business of mobile devices. The rivalry between iPhone vs. Samsung Galaxy is just for the newspapers: many things hold them together. The mobile devices are born from the same semiconductor factories.

Simply, Safaricom has executed One Oasis Strategy and Double Play Strategy at the same time. That is why it is one of the most respected brands in Kenya: it is fixing frictions at deep level in the lives of Kenyans.