Open Banking Nigeria: Kinexus, Paystack, Wallet.ng Endorse, Adopt API Standards

As Open Banking practices gain prominence in the global financial services industry, Kinexus, Paystack, and Wallet.ng, four of Nigeria’s most innovative Fintechs, have separately announced their intention to support and adopt Open Banking Application Programming Interface (API) standards for the transformation of financial services in Nigeria.

This was one of the revelations as the payment innovators announced that their respective organizations would, from the second quarter of 2018, integrate Open Banking technology into their solutions which are used by thousands of merchants and reach millions of online payers monthly.

 

“While Wallet.ng prides itself on being an agile, innovative and customer-experience-focused future banking institution, we understand the importance of collaborations and interfacing with the developer community via an Open API, providing them with access to our modern infrastructure and fast-growing customer base and working with them on advanced and futuristic solutions to help transform how people access financial services”  

These organizations have backed the Open Banking initiative in Nigeria since its early days. Kinexus participated in the review of the original API specifications of Open Banking Nigeria while Paystack is represented as the secretary in the group, which advocates for open APIs to deliver innovation and choice to customers, businesses, fintechs, and banks. Wallet.ng, on the other hand, would be providing APIs and data for developers and innovators to build on before the end of Q2 2018.

According to Shola Akinlade, the CEO of Paystack: “The transformation of online payments has largely been possible with the development of easy-to-integrate payment APIs. We believe that making APIs more accessible will make it easier for more players in the banking and financial services sectors to build innovative tools that better meet customers’ needs.”

“With Open Banking, financial institutions and solutions providers, as well as fintech companies, will become better integrated. As a result, consumers will enjoy more personalized financial services, in a way that guarantees their security and privacy. There’s so much potential for financial services in Nigeria. Open Banking standards are an important path towards unleashing that potential.”

Ope Adeoye, a representative of Open Banking Nigeria, said: “It is impressive how new Fintech companies like Kinexus, Wallet.ng, and Paystack are setting the pace and challenging the corporate culture that does not support Open Banking practices, despite its immense benefits for banks and other financial service providers. This, indeed, is the route to take into the future desired for the industry.”

Kinexus, a company focused on building the new digital economy, is a leader in API gateway, API management, and API portal system. The Kinexus Open Banking API solution simplifies and accelerates the process of delivering open banking by providing secure, ready-to-use APIs along with the computing infrastructure to support internal and external innovation.

Paystack – the first Y Combinator-backed company in Nigeria – powers between 15% to 20% of all online payments in Nigeria for over 8,000 businesses. Paystack has raised investment from the likes of Tencent, Comcast Ventures, and Ventures Platform.  

Open Banking Nigeria is a not-for-profit organizations that drives the Open Banking initiative in Nigeria to extend non-partisan and non-financial API standards for financial services in the country.