Nigeria Archives - Page 9 of 25

Fixing the PTA Palaver with Technology

There was a collective sigh of relief when the Central Bank of Nigeria recently decided to clear the backlog of travel allowances pending with banks. Nevertheless, a lot of well-meaning Nigerians could also see the opportunities for arbitrage and abuse. Of course, bad boys being bad boys, it quickly turned into a bazaar.

The Personal Travel Allowance, PTA, is a carryover of the ancient Nigerian command and control FX policies where the government, acting as the national nanny via the CBN, hands over FX at a subsidized rate of $4K per quarter. Never enough to build a mansion, yet the margins are sufficiently fat enough for anyone to do a quick deal. For example, the difference between the CBN rates and the alternative markets is about N120; that’s about N480K per quarter and N1.9M per year. Even the angels would be tempted.

Meanwhile, that’s nine times the annual minimum wage specified by the Federal Government.

Instead of looking a gift horse in the mouth by blaming the CBN, who could have turned the other way and let everyone roast with the BDCs of this world, some friends and I thought we could come up with ideas on how this can be managed with technology. Our sole object is to help those who need the FX to get them easily while ensuring the opportunity for abuse was minimized. After all, why blame the government for a poor policy if we don’t have clear alternatives.

After bashing our heads against the wall for some hours, we came up with the following:

FX Nanny Online 😊

The interesting thing with the Nigerian traveler is virtually every one of them has a bank account, and with that comes the dreaded Bank Verification Number, BVN. The BVN is probably the best invention to tame financial recklessness in Nigeria, but we are not utilizing up to 5% of its capabilities. That’s a story for another day.

To get FX for travel, the intending traveler would apply online at some random web app to be put up by the CBN. Let’s say it will be at www.fxnanny.cbn.gov.ng.

Travelers will specify the usual details: travel dates, airline ticket reference, travel document details (scanned copy of their passport), bank details, BVN, etc.

At application time, the web app will indicate the likely rate at which the FX will be sold.

The processing team can then review the application and if approved, make FX available by debiting the traveler’s account using the cardholders’ bank process. The processing must be automated, if not, it creates an opportunity for tingodism.

To ensure that abuse is kept to the minimum, travelers’ passports will be automatically validated with the immigration system, tickets checked against airline APIs, and when the traveler returns to the country, the travel records will be automatically checked against the immigrations airport database (does that even exist?).

And here comes the kicker. The FX will be available to a specific prepaid card which can only be used in the countries the travelers have specified and verified via their airline tickets. Additionally, the card or FX will only be active from the date of travel and cannot be used in Nigeria at all.

Travelers will need to buy the prepaid card from any bank, or their bank, and automatically, those cards will be tied to their BVN and be available for automatic loading. They won’t need to visit any bank branch.

Anyone found to have abused the system should be banned for half of eternity and made to spend two weeks with EFCC, washing plates, and detention cells.

Service could cost about 1% shared between banks, the platform provider, and the CBN. Someone has to keep the lights on!

Benefits to the Central Bank

It can finally have peace of mind and stop chasing banks around, hustling them to provide data about FX usage. That sucks a great deal.
The majority of PTA abuse can now be curbed. Of course, someone will always find a loophole, but that can be addressed when CBN gets to that bridge. Hopefully, not River Niger Second Bridge.
CBN will be able to have a real-time overview of the PTA market. It will be easy to ferret out insights into which countries people love to traipse to, which airlines love PTA users, which banks are playing games, etc. without issues.

Benefits to Travelers

With the assurance of a level playing field and the demystification of the man-know-man Nigerian problem, the regular traveler can have hopes of a decent PTA without sucking up to a raggedy teller in a bank branch.

Benefits to Banks

Earn commissions from processing the debit of travelers’ accounts and crediting the travel card. Should 0.65% be a good incentive?
The only source of temptation which has killed many budding careers would be taken away. Trust me; bankers regularly get steamrolled for FX infraction. In fact, it’s an existential risk for branch managers.

Apparently, our solution has glossed over many key issues. For example, who is going to build the application and maintain it? Is the CBN going to be allowed by card associations to issue cards? Will it issue MasterCard and Visa cards only? What will it say to Verve, Freedom, and Genesis cards? If the site crashes or slows down, who is going to be held responsible? What happens when a card is lost, stolen, or blocked? What happens when a traveler needs to change his travel plans?

I don’t have answers to these questions, but hey, the world is full of smarties. Anyone can contribute opinions below.

Those damned resolutions

Everyone makes resolutions, yet it’s always the same, forgotten like last year’s trends? Not anymore. Commit to monthly self-reviews, set delivery dates, and tie rewards to achievements. It’s time for discipline to meet ambition.

I have talked about it before, you have heard it too many times, nobody cares about it again. Yes, new year resolutions. We all made a few and like the years before; we have probably forgotten them by now.

We made resolutions knowing we weren’t as good as we wanted to be. Careers are stalled, bad habits run rings around our sensibilities, some want to be better dads, wives, husbands, parents, whatever! So we made tons of good-intentioned resolutions and without malice, forgot them as quickly as Donald Trump could fire a tweet.

For me, I’ve decided that this year would be different. At least, even if I don’t get to achieve all the items on the short list, it won’t be because I forgot them. Some are proving to be hard enough because of the additional shots of vodka in my cocktail when I wrote the list.

Nevertheless, I honestly believe that resolution items can be achieved, and even surpassed. I don’t even think it requires so much apart from a set of few tricks.

The methods are simple – I’ve people and myself, holding me accountable for the items on those lists and I’m committed to reviewing my progress every month. Also, there are things I would do/or not do, as a means of self-flagellation, if I don’t achieve specific results.

What self-review does
For those who have been unfortunate to work in banking, you would know the circus bankers do each month where sales guys and gals are grilled or sometimes pulped. That excruciatingly painful experience is called Monthly Performance Review. Many at times, there would be carnage and people never make it to the office the next day. Bankers gave it a bad name, but a regular review of performance is important for every organization, and if you run your life the way you run your job, it is something you must do if you want to succeed.

Commit, either to yourself or with someone you look up to, to review your 2017 resolutions each month. Maybe the first Saturday of the month? Be honest, assess your performance and ask tough questions about if you are getting nearer or not. If you are, give yourself a nice pat on the back. And if you aren’t, you have work to do. Do it.

Set Delivery Dates
By the way, I assume your resolutions have delivery dates. That you would repaint your living room without putting a specific time to do it is as good as not writing it down in the first instance.
We know that a pregnancy lasts for nine months and even without setting a delivery date or preparing for it, the baby would compulsory pop out, all things being equal. Your dreams are a special type of pregnancies, though, if you don’t set an EDD, they will die in your womb.

Goodbye Devialet Phantom Gold
I have been lusting after Phantom Gold for about few months, and I promised myself one this year. As much as I love to have that audiophile’s dream machine, I would never get one unless certain items on my resolution list are knocked off as done.

For example, if you don’t fix your CV, making it look like Bill Gate wrote it, you shouldn’t allow yourself get any Coldstone ice cream or Shawarma from Ebeano. If you don’t start that small side business to augment your salary, you can’t travel for summer (in this economy?). If you don’t save 50% of your salary each month (assuming the economy hasn’t wiped you out), you shouldn’t allow yourself to visit Hard Rock Café.
It sounds pretty silly, but it works. After all, who are you helping if not yourself?

A Moment to Reflect
There isn’t a better time to review a year than just at the start. January is gone already and February is already on its way. Trust me, before you can say, Jack Robinson, the year is done. Success isn’t usually some dramatic thing that happens in a bang but a series of normal things that stack up down the line.

Wouldn’t it be extremely sad if you procrastinate through the whole of 2017, when the economy is bad, Donald Trump is president, students are joining gangs, etc. and then reach 2018 to regret 2017? Meanwhile, your boss would continue, every month, to harass you about meeting set performance threshold. You will work your sorry ass out to achieve your team or company’s targets, your boss would get a fantastic bonus, probably go to Harvard/Stanford/INSEAD for a random executive course (which probably looks good on her CV but does no one any good) while you have nothing to write about.

Think. Act. Be disciplined.

Kennedy Uzoka is Nigeria’s coolest bank CEO

Kennedy Uzoka, UBA’s Group Managing Director, is the savviest bank CEO in Nigeria, as far as social media is concerned. Or so says an informal study by me.

He loves social media and practically hangs out there. While he won’t be allowed into the YMCA, he probably knows a thing or two about where and how to appeal to banking’s emerging core customers, Millennials. Based on the outcome of my, perhaps, dubious analysis, I decided to crown him a social media kingpin. He won’t be getting any plaque or prize money or anything. I don’t even know if he’s going to brag about it.

Recently, Herbert Wigwe, CEO of Access Bank was crowned the Twitter Lord by Business Day but as a tree doesn’t make a Zambisa forest, so also Twitter isn’t enough to rule the social media world. But then, that may be wrong, after all, Trump will rule America and the rest of the free world using nothing but Twitter.

So here’s how the CEOs stack up.

Chart from https://www.theatlas.com/i/atlas_SJdYZieIx.png showing how CEOs rank in social media

Nigerian banks will forever jostle for the eyeballs and minds of Millennials. I mean, social media was hot, digital banking is even an inferno now. It doesn’t take a soothsayer to know why; Millennials are the next target market as baby boomers start to die off gradually. Millennials live in the social media world, so no better place to hang out with them, pander to their whims, and hopefully, find a way to make some money off them.

In five years, Millennials, also known as Gen Y or those born in the ’80s and ’90s, will form the majority of the workforce. That means salaries, bonuses, shopping, car loans, mortgages, credit cards, DSTV, Netflix, chills, etc.
Unfortunately for banks in general and Nigerian banks, in particular, it has been mostly misses and few hits. At first glance, you wonder why because worldwide, 11 Nigerian banks are in the top 100 banks using social media. But we all know that you can’t run faster than the boss (let someone shout Hallelujah to that!).

So I wanted to know if the bosses are running in tandem with Millennials. After all, wouldn’t it be a strategic failure not to understand the life and time of the age cohort of those who would be banks’ greatest customers in the next few years?

Do the CEOs lead their banks by example? Do they even, on a personal level, understand social media, the platform on which the next generation of banking wars would be fought? If they lose out on Millennials, how do they plan to run their retail banking game?

Having little to do over the holidays, the devil in me played with some data and ranked Nigeria banking CEOs. Luckily, I’m out of banking else I could have found my sorry backside out of a job.

Methodology

There are bajillion social media platforms out there and even the craziest of us all can’t keep up with the madness. So I look at the presence on just Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Having a profile on each gives a score of 5 or 0.
Anyone can be on social media, being active is the real deal. So engagement is critical. Having an activity within the last 1 month gets 5 marks, the last 3 months gets 3 marks and nothing in 6 months gets 0
Many CEOs got there in the last few years, but it doesn’t take minutes to update profiles. Having a current profile gets a score of 5 and none gets 0.

You can download the original data here.

Note

This report isn’t a real scientific study but a random ranting from an armchair boffin. So take whatever you’ve read with a pinch of salt. Don’t ever ever ever use it as a reference for your school assignment. Be warned!

Why are Nigerian brands not on Nairaland and other local social media platforms?

Nairaland was social media before social media became anything in Nigeria. While it has failed to match its potentials, at least when compared with what Facebook and others have become, it retains its potency. In fact, every time a top Nigerian brand gets slammed on the site, the Executives quake.

Despite the impressive page views, none of the major Nigerian brands have a presence or spends on Nairaland. And it’s not about Nairaland alone; same goes for most homegrown social media websites such as World Junction, Naija Pals, etc.
Is there something wrong with local social media websites that the average Joe like me doesn’t know?
Social media has become so critical to branding and marketing that companies that don’t do it are practically toying with death. Well, nobody is going to get shot for not going online, but it’s now an existential risk eschewing social media.

The significance of social media in Nigeria cannot be overemphasized. Nigerians are said to be the most mobilized country in the world where 76% of all internet traffic run through our mobile phones despite the crappy data service served by the Telcos. Nigeria also has the highest number of Facebook users in Africa. I don’t know if that counts for anything but at least, it got Zuckerberg to get on the plane and see what’s happening out here in Lagos. So a company that doesn’t reach out to eyeballs where they congregate is only wasting its time.
You only need to visit profile pages of major companies in Nigeria to see how important they take social media. Hardly do you find any of these companies without dedicated teams just creating content on Facebook, YouTube, etc. on a daily.

This is apparent because social media companies are no longer small boys. Check out the following facts: Facebook is worth a whopping $331.39B as of December 2, 2016, while Mark himself is now the 6^th richest homo sapiens, worth $51.7B, just from sharing updates and videos of cats and naked girls. Snapchat, which was invented just like yesterday, has been valued at $20B. Microsoft just bought LinkedIn for $26.2B (Just give me the change on top, I swear, I will stop ranting forever!). Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp for a combined $20B.
The smallest of the major Social Media is larger than most countries; Facebook (1.79B) is bigger than China (1.4B).
Ok, we get it, social media is important!!
With all the money spent on social media, why are Nigerian social media sites not benefiting from the spends? Or why are Nigerian companies not spending on Nigerian websites?

So many arguments exist:

The Nigeria social media environment is not big enough.
Some argue that social media in Nigeria is not big or the local websites don’t attract viewers. The assertion is simply not true as there are metrics to show otherwise. Nairaland has more engagement in Nigeria than Facebook. It currently ranks as the 7^th most visited website while Facebook comes in as 8^th. Many major stories are broken on Linda Ikeji, Bella Naija, Nairaland, etc. Those who love tatafo know where they tune their antennas.

Nigerian social media is unstructured for structured brands
Home grown social media in Nigeria is like Oshodi market where area boys reign supreme. That is true, a trip through Nairaland is like walking in a Brazilian Favela. But Nairaland is tame compared to Reddit, where vitriol and porn rain down like typhoon. Top brands, such as Amazon, HTC, Red Bull, Ford, Nordstrom, etc. are making a kill on Reddit. Reddit has also hosted top names like Bill Gates, Obama (yes, Obama!) on a section called AMA (ask me anything).

Nigerian brands prefer foreign platforms
Colonial mentality or social media imperialism where nothing homegrown is good enough? However, when you figured out that Linda Ikeji bought her N600M mansion in Banana from money made online in Nigeria then the argument falls flat!
So the question is – why do companies in Nigeria shun local social media. I’m not talking about advertisement but creating a profile and reaching out.
Telcos, banks, and Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG – there is an acronym for everything) are the largest spenders on marketing in Nigeria. I don’t know the fraction of the global spend of $23.68B that came from Nigeria, but I know it should amount to something substantial, at least from the Nigerian perspective. What if a portion of what we spend is diverted to social media websites such as World Junction and Nairaland? If the world is expecting a 26.3% increase in spending on social media ads in 2017, shouldn’t Nigeria grow even much more?

Why I may not know the actual answers to this debacle, I know they have to do much more to become the platform of choice for brands and advertisers. They need to engage more, provide robust tools needed for targeting, curating and analytics. Going back to basic level, they even need business development executives to go after potential brands.

Who shall tell our stories?

I have spent the last few months reading, researching, and discussing with many payments industry experts about what the new wave of FinTech and payment innovations mean for the world, Africa, you, and most importantly me.

I’m sorry that I have to use the FinTech jargon. Just like big data, cloud, etc. FinTech as a buzzword is already annoying the heck out of me!

Opinions, just like the sands of the Eleko beach, are many, cheap, and quickly forgettable. However, what is not disputable, is that a lot of innovative things are happening all over the world and it is likely that the financial world as we know it may be gone soon.

Meanwhile, if I ask the average Joe or Jane, as the case may be, about the companies leading these packs, you get fancy names like Atom, WeBank, Ant Financials, Stripe, N26, Monzo, etc. Everyone is talking about BlockChain, Open Banking, PSD2, Trump, etc. So where is Africa?

Before anything else, I need to say that Africa is not a country!

I’ve had the opportunity to talk to many companies doing fantastic things in different countries in Africa, but the average African doesn’t know about them. Yeah, you want to mention M-Pesa? Vodafone invented M-Pesa for Safaricom in Kenya and Vodacom in Tanzania and partly funded by DFID.
While the world is begging the USA to start doing instant interbank transfers, Nigeria and other countries like Zimbabwe have been doing it for centuries, but who knows? Outside of Africa, more people know about UK’s faster payments than Zimbabwe’s ZIPIT. Does ZIPIT means “to keep quiet”?
Tax collection is a mess in Nigeria, but the TSA platform from Remita is sufficiently more advanced than what can found in other countries, but who knows?

mCash, recently launched in Nigeria, promises to upend merchant payments but hardly did the story get beyond the border before it was rudely sent back home.

MyCash is a pure-play digital bank in Zimbabwe running out of a tiny office on a shared infrastructure, but I can bet that you are reading about it here for the first time.

Africans may not have achieved the level of development seen in western countries and Asia, but not everyone has been sitting around climbing iroko trees. However, while we may be furiously developing payment and other technology solutions, hardly do we get the word out.

If we think others will tell our stories, we may have to wait until chickens grow teeth. Letting the world know isn’t just about the beautiful 15 minutes of fame that everyone craves, but more importantly, to encourage our youth that good things are also possible in Africa.

Even though the technology behind M-Pesa may have come from Vodafone, the airtime it got spurred the rapid development of mobile money across Africa, and it is one of the good things exported by Africa to the world.

We need more beautiful stories to be told. But much more, we need storytellers.