PalmPay: Collaboration, Innovation Key to Financial Literacy

Emma Okonji

PalmPay, a leading Africa-focused fintech platform, has stressed the need for collaboration and innovation among banks and fintechs to drive financial inclusion at the last mile.

Head of Partnerships, PalmPay, Chibuzor Melah, made the call while speaking on a panel session during the Nigeria Fintech Forum, which held recently in Lagos, with the themed: ‘Building the Next Frontiers for Nigeria’s Fintech’.

The event brought together, key stakeholders from both the public and private sectors, including regulators to discuss the rapid advancements in Nigeria’s financial technology industry.

Speaking on the theme: Rewriting the rules: Building an Open, Innovative and Collaborative Bank of the Future, Melah noted that “PalmPay is a technology driven company that believes in collaborating and innovating to deliver value to customers.”

According to him, “What has given us success in the past five years of operation is our investment in data, which gives us insights into customer behaviour. This enables us to create tailor-made solutions suitable for our customers. Our insight driven strategy has helped us reach out to the unbanked thereby building trust in open banking. We have succeeded by collaborating with other players in the financial sector. We believe that there’s still a lot more to do in building trust, driving financial inclusion in the last mile.”

Giving instances about the financial sector that has undergone incredible changes, as described by the EFInA Access to Finance (A2F) Survey 2023 report, that the formal financial inclusion in Nigeria has grown significantly from 56 per cent in 2020 to 64 per cent in 2023, Melah said: “This success can be attributed to collaborative efforts between banks and fintechs but more collaboration can take place. Interestingly, the challenges we face today have opened opportunities to collaborate to gain new markets, deliver new products to benefit the economy.”