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he says he is happy to have the international companies “focus on creating a serious and valid market”. Of course, the fact that they are using and paying to use his infrastructure, built partially to provide ATM card technology – must make it all the more enjoyable. And it’s an impressive infrastructure as after a mere 11 years, Nigeria has almost 12,000 ATMs, several internet portals and over 130,000 point-of-sale machines. And more than 18 million Nigerians carry a Verve card. Elegbe feels the customers have benefited as well as they now have more choices and says “there is a business case for a domestic card scheme in Nigeria and for an international card scheme so they will have choice in both markets.” “I have a long-term view of the market and you have to take long-term self-interest into account,” he says. While the split is more than amicable, Elegbe had to ensure that the right governance structure was in place because while the holding company structure was retained there also had to be segregation and an arm’s length approach. “Verve has a separate board and we also had to get approval from the regulator and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) approved the separation and confirmed that it meets the arm’s lengths requirements,” he says. However, this is not the end of the story as Elegbe says he is looking, in the near future, “to announce the creation of three or four more companies that will become wholly owned subsidiaries.” The shareholders, which include private equity firm Helios Investment Partners with a majority stake, also provide a degree of corporate governance, he says.
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The entry of Mastercard and Visa with their chip-and-pin cards forced Interswitch to adopt the technology to comply with a mandate from the CBN, which was pleased to find a new way of preventing the country’s high levels of card fraud and cloning. Elegbe was happy to do so, saying getting people’s trust was a ‘full-time job’ but that with the support of the regulator and the new technology, fraud has dropped considerably in fact “over 90 percent in the last few years” and it’s a much bigger market than it was in 2002 when people were sceptical. He’s seen some big changes over this period of time especially in challenging the perceptions of people about using electronic payments in Nigeria and other neighbouring countries which have chronic power cuts. That answer has been standalone ATMs that rely on generators to kick in during the cuts.
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ACI Payment Systems In Africa ACI’s solutions are used by more than 120 banks, processors, and retailers. ACI has powered electronic payments for Interswitch and 22 of Nigeria’s existing financial institutions since 2002. ACI solutions include payments processing; card and merchant management; online banking; mobile, branch and voice banking; fraud detection; trade finance; and electronic bill presentment and payment. ACI’s Universal Payments Platform provides true enterprise payments capabilities when combined with ACI’s retail, wholesale, merchant, fraud and mobile payments solutions.
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