Emma Okonji
FinTech NGR and Huawei Cloud recently released the highly anticipated Nigerian FinTech Cloud Adoption White Paper at an event in Lagos, where they highlighted its significance in addressing the key challenges faced by Nigeria’s FinTech.
Financial Technology (FinTech), refers to the innovative application of technology in the financial services sector. It encompasses a broad range of digital solutions and services that aim to revolutionise traditional financial processes. Through the use of advanced technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and mobile applications, FinTech companies offer faster, more convenient, and user-centric financial services to individuals and businesses.
Speaking at the launch of the Nigerian FinTech Cloud Adoption White Paper, the Vice President, Huawei Cloud, Mr. Paul Adigu, said the release of the white paper would highlight, the growing international recognition and consumer acceptance of Nigerian FinTech solutions, adding that the collaboration between FinTech NGR, and Huawei Cloud, aims to foster stronger synergies between FinTech startups and established enterprises, providing a platform for accelerated growth and innovation.
Group Head from Zenith Bank, Mr. Lanre Oladimeji, said the Nigerian FinTech’s Cloud Adoption White Paper serves as a comprehensive analysis of the current state, requirements, and challenges of the FinTech industry in Nigeria, providing practical solutions through cloudification, which deserves to be appreciated.
According to the white paper,the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has significantly impacted the Nigerian economy, presents a unique opportunity for FinTech to contribute to economic recovery and development. To realise this potential, it is crucial for entrepreneurs to scale up their operations, enhance their value propositions, and tap into the immense FinTech opportunities that Nigeria offers.
The Nigerian FinTech Cloud Adoption White Paper examines six broad segments within the industry: Payments, mobile money and digital banking; Lending; Savings, investment, and crowdfunding; Enterprise services and infrastructure; Cryptocurrency; and InsurTech. With its focus on innovation, efficiency, security, and reliability, FinTech embraces cloud-based infrastructure as a key enabler for achieving these goals.
The white paper also highlighted the key benefits of cloud computing and the challenges.
“Cloud computing plays a critical role in the future of FinTech in Nigeria. However, several challenges impede the rapid adoption of cloud services in the industry. These challenges include complex and outdated approval processes, data retention and security concerns, fierce competition, security risks due to fast development, external attacks stemming from big data channels, and difficulties with data isolation,” the white paper said.
However, to address the challenges, the Nigerian FinTech Cloud Adoption White Paper emphasises the importance of considering four key aspects of cloud adoption within the industry to include: Regulatory Compliance, Cloud Security, Cloud Native Infrastructure, and Operational Costs.
Giving details of the four key aspects of cloud adoption, the 98 page white paper document explained that with the regulatory compliance, the white paper would provide insights into how Nigerian FinTech enterprises on Huawei Cloud comply with international and local laws and regulations, ensuring regulatory requirements are met.
In the area of cloud security, it explained that the Huawei Cloud would present a comprehensive security framework and success cases, assuring FinTech enterprises of robust security measures necessary for cloud migration.
The white paper emphasises the significance of a cloud-native infrastructure and distributed FinTech architecture for successful digital and cloud transformation within the industry. It also explained that the management framework outlined in the white paper, offers decision-makers in FinTech enterprises, a thorough analysis of cloud operational costs based on a cloud architecture.
The cloud adoption white paper framework is designed to assist small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in migrating to, utilising, and managing the cloud effectively, thereby facilitating accelerated cloud-based transformation within the FinTech sector. Its ultimate goal is to provide the fintech industry with cloud-based concepts, methods, systems, and best practices.
The CEO and Founder of OPay Nigeria, Olu Akanmu, who narrated the success story about the collaboration between Huawei Cloud and OPay, said as a foremost agency banking network in Nigeria, with over 26 million customers and over 500,000 agents across Nigeria, OPay partnered Huawei Cloud on its intelligent smart cloud infrastructure to make its mobile money platform more agile, accessible and robust for improved customer experience. He said the partnership helped OPay to create very high transaction concurrency and to expand its transaction base rapidly, without experiencing operational downtime, and with low latency time.
