The General Manager of the United States- based payment company, Visa Incorporated, in West Africa, Mr. Ade Ashaye tells OYETUNJI ABIOYE that Nigerian banks need to develop more customer-focused payment cards to drive e-payment in the country, among other things

How would you assess the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Cashless Nigeria initiative so far?

It is an interesting question that often comes up. If you look at factors like how many Point of Sale terminal we have installed in Nigeria over the past four years and you compare it to other African countries, you can only say we have achieved much success. Really, we are nearly at par with South Africa. South Africa issued the first Visa card about 30 years ago, and in only four years we have come at par in terms of the number of places you can use your cards. So that is in the driving success. But this is stage one. But the stage two which is in the area of laying out infrastructure and choosing how that infrastructure is going to be used, there is still opportunity. Yes infrastructure is there but how do you drive the utility? How do you ensure it is used to the point that everybody gets benefit? So I think the works that need to be done now have to do with driving utility. And for me, the key area in terms of driving utility has to do with helping banks to develop products that really meet their customers’ needs. You would see that the card programmes that have the most usage are those that were designed to meet specific needs. And how do you help more banks to do that? Specifically, one key area in Nigeria is the issuing of credit cards. We have prepaid debit card that has to do with spending your own money. But credit card has to do with having a line of credit. What we have seen is that because there is a huge opportunity in this area, the best designed card programmes get great utility. So how do we help more banks to do this? You see for instance that Diamond Bank won an award for its credit card programme. And one of the comments from the head of transactions banking in the bank is that we need more banks to issue credit cards. And the reason is that the more banks issue credit cards, the more awareness is created and the more consumers are able to have better understanding of it and this lead to more utility.

Can you enumerate other main factors slowing down the use of credit card in Nigeria?

We facilitate our clients (banks) to issue both debit prepaid and credit cards. There are really some strength in the use of credit cards from the experience of the banks that have issued them. I would say that the challenge is not about issuing credit cards but in getting people to understand that these cards can be issued appropriately, and how to ensure that the banks that will issue them are comfortable in terms of how they are going to manage the risks around it. Diamond Bank and other banks have proved that it can be done. However, there are still things that are coming through in the industry like the Bank Verification Number. The BVN will make banking industry to know that Ade Ashaye in one bank is the same Ashaye Ade in another bank. All these things will help to provide more information that will make risk managers in banks to be a little bit more comfortable. And it is really down to your appetite to take and manage risks.

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