According to McKinsey, a consultancy, the revenue of African fintech companies is projected to grow by 8x to reach $30 billion by 2025. That projection is believable when you remember that fintech is the operating system of markets. Indeed, as businesses fix frictions of customers, they want to be paid. In other words, unless there is a seamless way to compensate producers for the value they create in markets, by paying them, the demand-supply equilibrium point fails.
This explains why Africa is emerging as a fintech continent and Nigeria has emerged as one of the best farmlands where fintech unicorns (startups worth at least $1 billion) are bred. But this breeding requires new thinking, well beyond the old model of just embedding APIs at checkout pages and points. Indeed, fintech must unlock new vistas by actually powering and stimulating new verticals.
Interswitch, the fintech pioneer has shown a recent dance step: it has launched Quickteller Transport through its consumer digital lifestyle and payments platform. According to a press release, it will help “users to easily search and book inter-state trips from multiple travel operators across Nigeria. Users will also be able to filter their search to specific or preferred Operators, compare fare prices based on criteria such as vehicle type, departure point and time, as well as access specialized functions provided by transport Operators including seat selection and preferred pick-up location option, all at their convenience”.
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We’re in 2022 and this is the beginning of the application utility era in Nigeria where companies will unlock more value from mobile internet. And fintech firms will become just not distributors of APIs, but ecosystem operators across verticals, as the industry moves into a new phase of evolution. Expect #playbooks like Quickteller Transport in more verticals, as apps continue to organize our lives, hosted in our smartphones.
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