Mitchell Elegbe, Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer, Interswitch, has written a thank you letter to Interswitch staff in celebration of the organisation’s 20 years of operations.
The letter, a copy of which was gleaned by our reporter, talks about the sheer grit and determination of himself and likeminded young Nigerians who defied logic to take on a challenge to change the Nigerian payment landscape some 20 years ago.
“Yes, we were excited about the chance to change our world, but then, our excitement was laced with some apprehension and uncertainty,” Elegbe wrote in the letter he titled “Fellow outliers, turns out we were right!” According to Elegbe, so strange was the idea then and enormous the hurdle that “In the weeks leading up to that day, [4 December 2002] several well-meaning people had attempted to wake me up from my reverie, offering logical postulations and realistic explanations that were all clearly predicting that I was building a bubble in the wrong clime, at the wrong time. Looking at the paltry furnishings, and the huge cloud of doubt hanging over our heads, even I wondered to myself – can we really do this?”
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What makes the idea a harder sell, the letter stated, was that then society was suspicious of and resistant to change. “How we fought to share our solutions with a society that was accustomed to its problems,” wrote Elegbe. The Group CEO said the Interswitch story today has vindicated their resolve. “Looking back now, it looks like we were right. History, after all, favours the brave. But even if history forgets, we must not forget. We must not forget the arduous but rewarding path we have journeyed in the last 20 years.”
Today, from that uncertain beginning, “processing five transactions in an entire week”, Interswitch has “progressed gradually to processing millions of transactions daily.” From a small corner office, Elegbe said, in the letter, that he feels fulfilled “when I walk down the corridors of our nine buildings and I see vibrant men and women putting their minds, hearts, and hands to work, because they believe in our dream of a prosperous Africa.”
He saluted the quality of ideas in young Nigerians then and even now and how that turned Interswitch to an unqualified success story across Africa and the world, helping the business to attain a unicorn status, the first tech business out of Africa to attain such status, and creating “Africa’s premier and most successful card brand” in the process.
The letter, which Elegbe called a “thank you note to you #TheGoodPeopleOfTheSwitch”, also envisioned a strong future prospect for Interswitch and the payment industry on the continent. “The future is incubating in your minds; the possibilities are unfathomable and together we can usher Africa into an all-new era of innovation. We have merely spent the last 20 years preparing for what is to come.”
Interswitch has totally transformed the payment landscape in Nigeria and across Africa over the past two decades, “connecting players across industries, switching on possibilities and harnessing technology to make payments become seamless.” The letter expresses Interswitch’s determination to continue to play a leading role in helping to break new grounds in payment solutions across the continent. “We are inspiring Africa to greatness, and we will never stop, Elegbe assured.
