‘Embedded Finance Will Enhance Payment System across Platforms’

Emma Okonji

Stakeholders in the Fintech industry have stressed the need for the adoption of embedded finance across all payment platforms, insisting that embedded finance is the future of payments.

The stakeholders who spoke in Lagos during one of the panel sessions at the 2022 Fintech Summit, organised by Techpoint Africa, with the theme: ‘Embedded Finance- Where it is now and where it can be,’ said embedded finance would seamlessly integrate financial services that are offered by Fintech players.

One of the panelists, Dickson Nsofor, Founder and CEO of Kora, a plug-and-play pan-African payment infrastructure, said embedded finance would enhance digital payment solutions, which Kora offers to customers. “Embedded finance is the future of payments, and we are building physical solutions to support it. Development in the financial service space is tilting towards an era where Fintechs will become embedded finance distributors by using their solutions to provide embedded financial payments,” Nsofor said.

Addressing the issue of a cashless economy in a digital era, Nsofor explained that cashless would always drag in low trust environment like Nigeria, adding that more awareness campaigns must be carried out to educate and sensitise Nigerians on the need to build trust and fully adopt the cashless initiative, despite its teething challenges.

Co-founder and CEO, Pay-U, Temitope Adeyemi, said embedded finance would spread fast across all payment platforms and would allow customers to store financial values in relation to insurance. 

Co-founder and CEO, Anchor, Segun Adeyemi, also said embedded finance would encourage organisations to have Fintech built into their business model in order to take full advantage of embedded finance, which he added would enable organisations to launch their products to a wide range of customers. 

Co-founder and CEO, Credpal, Fehintolu Olaogun, also mentioned that one of the strong drivers of embedded finance would be the opportunity for customers to pay for products over a long period of time.  

Giving details about Kora, Nsofor said the infrastructure was designed to provide payments across African countries. According to him, the platform focuses on building payment solutions that enable businesses to accept payments from any location within Africa.