As moves to establish open banking API standards in Nigeria intensifies, PwC Nigeria, Heritage Bank, and Global Accelerex have joined the list of companies who are currently supporting Open Banking Nigeria (OBN).
In separate announcements, the companies have pledged their support towards the adoption of Open Banking Application Programming Interface (API) standards for the transformation of financial services in Nigeria.
PwC Nigeria, a global leader in Open Banking thought leadership, who joined OBN as an observing partner, has revealed in a short statement from the communications team that they are keen to work with the team to engender Open APIs within the Nigerian financial industry. “The Nigerian Financial Services sector is one of the most innovative in the world and is showing no signs of slowing down. We believe that Open Banking has the potential to further open up the banking industry, ignite innovation and enhance the public’s experience with the financial services industry,” the company said.
In a statement issued by Mr. Ike Williams – Chief Information Officer, Heritage Bank, he said “Heritage Bank is happy to partner with Open Banking Nigeria on this groundbreaking initiative. The bank is committed to delivering distinctive financial services, through innovative technology among other things. In adopting this standard, the collaboration will be easier, and our customers and partners can be assured of consistently superior service delivery efficiency, through quick and simple integration methodology. We firmly believe that Open Banking principle is the future.” This came after the successful signing of an MOU with Open Banking Nigeria.
Looking to use Open Banking to drive its next generation of innovations, Global Accelerex Limited has said this strategic partnership will provide a platform of integrating APIs amongst different banks and other financial institutions in Nigeria at no extra cost, thereby eliminating the rigor of duplicating the process with individual banks. Once it becomes fully operational, customers will experience ease, flexibility, and convenience in their payment and business processes. According to Tunde Ogungbade, the Managing Director of Global Accelerex “Open Banking Nigeria will boost delivery of faster and simpler payment services to customers, even as It will promote financial inclusion by allowing end users connect directly to banks without mediators, thereby keeping transaction costs low and affordable’. Open Banking Nigeria initiative will increase the customers’ power of choice as they have multiple options and service providers to choose from. This will also facilitate the creation of products and services for the financially marginalized”.
In a separate development, IBM Nigeria, currently working with some tier 1 Nigerian banks on their API strategy and implementation, has signed on Open Banking Nigeria as a partner which would accelerate the development of their customers’ API gateways in compliance with Open Banking Nigeria API standard on its API connect and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) products.
Open Banking Nigeria, formed by a group of Fintech and banking industry veterans, is a not-for-profit organization that drives the Open Banking initiatives in Nigeria to extend non-partisan and non-financial API standards for financial services in the country.