Hello everyone, I'm currently working on a mobile wallet app in which we integrate almost all the Flutterwave API, and we also planning to launch, please is it required to get a cbn license before we launch or we can get that later, how important is the license?

Two things are involved:
1. You launch and wait for CBN to come for you
2. You don't launch until you get a licence

Whether CBN will come for you or not will depend on what major services you are providing and when they notice your activities.

NOTE:
1. you can't hold people's funds for saving on their behalf without a licence.
2. if you are planning to collect money on people's behalf without them directly selling any service on your platform, you'll also need a licence


ADVICE:
Money can be very tempting to keep, you might get tempted to divert people's money for personal use or investments purposes and regret it. Even banks and fintechs are audited occassionally to make sure nobody is diverting anyone's money for personal use. Stay away from anything that will involve EFCC for your own good, find something else to do

Thanks for this, i really appreciate

YoungCabal:
Two things are involved:
1. You launch and wait for CBN to come for you
2. You don't launch until you get a licence

Whether CBN will come for you or not will depend on what major services you are providing and when they notice your activities.

NOTE:
1. you can't hold people's funds for saving on their behalf without a licence.
2. if you are planning to collect money on people's behalf without them directly selling any service on your platform, you'll also need a licence


ADVICE:
Money can be very tempting to keep, you might get tempted to divert people's money for personal use or investments purposes and regret it. Even banks and fintechs are audited occassionally to make sure nobody is diverting anyone's money for personal use. Stay away from anything that will involve EFCC for your own good, find something else to do

Yes as long as you're in Nigeria and not running a Ponzi scheme

YoungCabal:
Two things are involved:
1. You launch and wait for CBN to come for you
2. You don't launch until you get a licence

Whether CBN will come for you or not will depend on what major services you are providing and when they notice your activities.

NOTE:
1. you can't hold people's funds for saving on their behalf without a licence.
2. if you are planning to collect money on people's behalf without them directly selling any service on your platform, you'll also need a licence


ADVICE:
Money can be very tempting to keep, you might get tempted to divert people's money for personal use or investments purposes and regret it. Even banks and fintechs are audited occassionally to make sure nobody is diverting anyone's money for personal use. Stay away from anything that will involve EFCC for your own good, find something else to do

Looool....I personally think finance business is very good lucrative business. You never make a loss because you always charge for your services rendered. You just need a critical mass of users so that the total.charge exceeds your infrastructure and wages cost. And with good Treasury/Money management it can be super profitable. But the temptation is there to steal people's monies in your custody. Well steal.is not the word. Misappropriate more like. But from misappropriation without being caught, it ultimately ends in stealing. I've personally toyed with the idea of a Fintech startup but I've never understand the space and my liver dey fail me sometimes.

airsaylongcome:


Looool....I personally think finance business is very good lucrative business. You never make a loss because you always charge for your services rendered. You just need a critical mass of users so that the total.charge exceeds your infrastructure and wages cost. And with good Treasury/Money management it can be super profitable. But the temptation is there to steal people's monies in your custody. Well steal.is not the word. Misappropriate more like. But from misappropriation without being caught, it ultimately ends in stealing. I've personally toyed with the idea of a Fintech startup but I've never understand the space and my liver dey fail me sometimes.

I'm not saying finance business is not good, you are not allowed to run financial services without a licence same way you can't just wake up one morning and rent a shop in your neighbourhood and turn it into a bank.

On the issue of profit, it depends on the transaction volume not really the number of users. You can have 10,000 users and still may not make any reasonable profit at the end of the month if they don't perform enough transactions, some of these fintech companies are just running on vibes, they don't make a reasonable profit yet.

To be honest, I don't advice any young talented person to be solely responsible for anything monetary in this age filled with peer pressure to outdo one's self, you can easily get tempted to borrow from it even if you didn't have any bad intention initially.

Thank you, maybe I will have to wait till I can afford the license

YoungCabal:

I'm not saying finance business is not good, you are not allowed to run financial services without a licence same way you can't just wake up one morning and rent a shop in your neighbourhood and turn it into a bank.

On the issue of profit, it depends on the transaction volume not really the number of users. You can have 10,000 users and still may not make any reasonable profit at the end of the month if they don't perform enough transactions, some of these fintech companies are just running on vibes, they don't make a reasonable profit yet.

To be honest, I don't advice any young talented person to be solely responsible for anything monetary in this age filled with peer pressure to outdo one's self, you can easily get tempted to borrow from it even if you didn't have any bad intention initially.

wavefly:
Thank you, maybe I will have to wait till I can afford the license

Nope. Why wait till then?

Do your development, get out your MVP. Test, iterate and iterate.

Get your domain and brand names etc.

If your product is unique, you might get funding for the licensing.

Just don’t launch without the license

Thanks, i really apprecuate your comment

truthCoder:


Nope. Why wait till then?

Do your development, get out your MVP. Test, iterate and iterate.

Get your domain and brand names etc.

If your product is unique, you might get funding for the licensing.

Just don’t launch without the license