Headquartered in Lagos, Zone serves large commercial banks, payment fintechs, digital banks, and OFIs with real-time, low-cost settlement of both fiat and digital currencies for domestic and cross-border payments.

Through the agreement, ThetaRay will provide Zone the SaaS-based SONAR AI solution that can detect and prevent the earliest signs of sophisticated attempts to launder money or circumvent financial sanctions and watchlists. The solution will help Zone ensure it fully complies with regulatory AML requirements and increase its growth opportunities by providing a trustworthy and secure service.

The new collaboration highlights ThetaRay’s expansion in Nigeria’s fintech payments market.

Zone is Africa’s first decentralized or peer-to-peer payment network based on blockchain technology, which allows payment transactions without dependence on intermediary switches. The decentralized architecture and the underlying technology enhance reliability, eliminate customer disputes, reduce the cost of operations, and automate back-office reconciliation. The network is a true web-scale infrastructure with a capacity for transaction processing throughput of over 50,000 transactions per second.

“We are thrilled with our partnership with ThetaRay, a collaboration that represents a significant step forward in our vision to become one global network to pay anyone, through any means, in any currency, in the most efficient and secure means possible,” said Elendu Uche, Co-Founder/Chief Operating Officer.

By integrating with ThetaRay, we have enhanced our security measures and improved our regulatory compliance whilst providing faster transaction processing for our users within our decentralized payment network. We look forward to working even more closely with ThetaRay to continue delivering frictionless operations and reliable transactions to our customers.”

As Africa’s largest economy with a population of 200 million, Nigeria is home to Africa’s largest fintech ecosystem and more than 200 fintech companies. The country’s youthful population has driven Nigeria’s thriving fintech sector, increased smartphone penetration, and a focused regulatory drive to increase financial inclusion and cashless payments, according to the McKinsey research firm.1 The booming fintech market is helping improve financial inclusion in Nigeria, where more than 40 percent of the population is unbanked.

“Zone is leading Nigerian fintech innovation with a platform capable of revolutionizing the financial system through inclusive services that positively impact people’s lives,” said Mark Gazit, CEO of ThetaRay. “By deploying sophisticated AI technology to monitor and screen payments, Zone will embed the trust into its services, enabling it to grow volume, revenues and ecosystem partners.”

ThetaRay’s award-winning SONAR solution is based on a proprietary form of AI, artificial intelligence intuition, that replaces human bias, giving the system the power to recognize anomalies and find unknowns outside of normal behavior, including entirely new typologies. It enables fintechs and banks to implement a risk-based approach to effectively identify suspicious activity and create a full picture of customer identities, including across complex, cross-border transaction paths. This allows the rapid discovery of both known and unknown money laundering threats.

By building Africa’s first layer-1 blockchain network, Zone will enable payments and the acceptance of digital currencies for Financial Service Providers globally.

Zone’s regulated blockchain network enables direct transaction flow between financial service providers without an intermediary, bringing reduced transaction costs, instant dispute resolution, and absolute reliability across Africa’s payment borders and beyond.

As part of its evolution, Appzone is pivoting from its cloud-based SaaS infrastructure to offer payments processing services that support both fiat money and digital currencies, with the intention to enable a hybrid interim period in finance where TradFi and DeFi will coexist seamlessly.

In the case of fiat payments, Zone connects some of Africa’s most prominent Banks and Fintechs within and across countries and utilises a native stable coin to provide real-time settlement for cross-border transactions. In 2022, Zone was issued a ‘payment Switching and Processing Licence‘ by the central bank of Nigeria, making it the first payment infrastructure company based on Blockchain to be licensed in Africa. 

Following the rebrand, Appzone’s Banking-as-a-Service business has been carved into a separate standalone company, known as Qore, so it can continue serving existing clients and growing the SaaS platform’s reach.

This new standalone business will be led by some members of its elite leadership team, including Emeka Emetarom, Co-founder & Executive Director of Appzone and Mudiaga Umukoro, Co-founder & CEO of Appzone’s subsidiary, Appzone Core. Appzone’s products currently process over $2 billion annually for 500+ banks, Fintechs and MFIs in seven countries – this includes payments processing for six of Africa’s top 25 banks.

Speaking on the rebrand, Zone Co-founder and CEO Obi Emetarom said, “We have led Africa’s fintech sector in global firsts for over a decade. As Appzone, we launched the first core banking and omnichannel software on the cloud as well as the first multi-bank direct debit service based on single global mandates.

With this transition to Zone, we are utilising the power of blockchain technology to connect every monetary store of value and enable reliable, frictionless and universally interoperable payments.

In doing this, we are building one global network to pay anyone through any means, in any currency, which will ultimately maximise financial inclusion and accelerate economic prosperity for Africa and the rest of the world.” 

Co-founder and CTO for Zone, Wale Onawunmi, added, “At Zone, we’ve always been early adopters of innovative technology with the potential to transform industries – in this case, the finance industry.

Our next-generation decentralised payment technology, which is the first of its kind, will challenge the status quo and become the future of payments for the world.

We are encouraged by the pace of adoption we have seen so far and remain passionate about enabling financial services providers to reach their full potential.” 

According to the United Nations, Africa’s population will grow to approximately 1.7 billion in 2030, with a potential for $91 billion in cross-border payments and a retail value of over $1.5 trillion. But at an $8.97 fee per transaction, cross-border payment within sub-Saharan Africa still has one of the most expensive remittance structures.

In addition, beneficiaries typically cannot have value delivered instantly to their Bank accounts or mobile wallets. Zone’s Layer-1 blockchain network will allow payments initiated from one country in one currency to be received instantly in another country and currency at a fraction of prevailing costs.

Blockchain is a digital ledger of transactions that provides users with traceability and security without the need for middlemen. Using blockchain, Zone is working on completely digitising and decentralising payments, thereby paving the way for a cashless society where payments transcend borders.

Formerly known as Appzone, the Google for Startups Accelerator alumnus, now known as Zone, is on a mission to connect every monetary store of value using blockchain.

In a strategic move to digitize banks across Africa and facilitate the emergence of a fully automated and connected financial ecosystem, Appzone, the Pan African fintech software provider group, has announced that it is carving out its Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform from the existing business into a new business entity (named Qore).

Previously a grouping of four separate business units, the organization is accelerating the growth of entirely digital products for the financial institutions on the continent. Its platform can be used by some of the top Commercial Banks, Fintechs, and Neobanks to supply cutting-edge specialty products.

Emeka Emetarom, Co-founder and CEO, Qore stated during a press conference that the company would keep empowering financial institutions in Africa to become the most effective and inventive in the world.

“As a revolutionary banking innovator, Qore is enabling significant progress for a new era of fully digital Banks in Africa. Over the last decade, we have played a remarkable and active role in driving the digitization of Nigeria and Africa’s financial services ecosystem.

We are excited about what the future holds for us and for digital banking in Africa, especially since we will now operate as a BaaS-focused business entity going forward.

Qore’s unique advantages are market fit and cost-effectiveness which allow financial institutions to deliver highly relevant products at a fraction of cost. We are also leveraging the platform’s numerous integrations with mainstream payment systems to achieve instant interoperability with other industry players at no extra cost” Emeka added.

Speaking about how the company is delivering value for the diverse scale of financial institutions in Africa, Co-founder/COO, Qore, Mudiaga Umukoro, says Qore has built the only truly African cloud-native core banking and integrated channel solution, tailored specifically to the African market.

“We understand the realities of the African financial ecosystem, alongside the limitations that are preventing financial products in Africa from reaching their full potential and solving once and for all, the age-old Financial Inclusion challenge. This is why Qore is refocusing its efforts towards powering effortless and limitless banking across the continent. Says Mudiaga

“Having completely digitized and automated the operations and products of almost 500 Financial Institutions on the continent, we are ready to take on the rest of Africa” Mudiaga added.

In the last 5 years Africa’s financial sector has aggressively adopted digital banking, with more individuals and organizations bypassing physical structures, paper trails and physical cash in favor of self-service offerings on digital devices. Currently, challenger and traditional banks in Africa are limited to using foreign technology solutions tailored for Western markets, and many of these solutions are hindered by prohibitive pricing, poor market fit and a lack of local tech support.

With operations in Nigeria and Kenya, and clients across the continent including Ghana, Gambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Tanzania, and Senegal, Qore is supporting the digital transformation efforts of traditional Banks, many of which are still stuck with legacy systems that limit their ability to compete effectively.

“Since investing in Appzone, it has been remarkable to witness the business growth and transformation that has now led to the emergence of Qore. We are even more excited to have a front seat at the table as Qore sets the course for redefining the future of digital banking across Africa. We are confident in the team’s ability to deliver on its audacious vision of setting the pathway for delivering effortless, limitless banking for all across Africa” said Yomi Jemibewon, Partner and Managing Director, of CardinalStone Capital Advisers Limited.

Qore also powers an omni-channel self-service platform, USSD interfaces, Payment ecosystem integrations, merchant services capabilities, and instant card issuance. In addition, the platform provides clients with modules that enable end-to-end lending automation, direct debit collections from multiple accounts, and Agent Banking. These functionalities are available to Fintechs like digital lenders and neobanks, as well as traditional banks like Commercial Banks, MFIs, Mortgage Banks, and Consumer Lenders.

The platform also leverages the ease of customization and availability of local support to seamlessly plug into the needs of African Banks and Fintechs.

Over the last decade, Qore’s remarkable impact on the Nigerian and African financial services ecosystem has earned the company recognition as the de facto provider of banking technology in the OFI segment, and the first and only African Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) Platform.

Other milestone achievements for the company include building the first African cloud-based Digital Core Banking and omnichannel software, launching Africa’s first self-service platform for instant debit card issuance, and building the first and only Correspondent Banking automation platform with all Nigerian commercial banks integrated.

So, I approached Wale Onawunmi, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of AppZone Group to tell us about the journey so far. It is already 10 months post-launch.

Wale is a graduate (Bachelor of Science) Computer Science with Economics from the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria.

But before then, he has always been a tech enthusiast. Wale told me that his first encounter with a computer was at the age 10 “and since then, I’ve always known that I was going to be involved in building software”.

This sort of shaped his path from then till where he is now. He did an internship at a company called Smashers & Technologies; a company that outsourced software development for a foreign company then. This was where Wale learned a lot of his coding experience initially, and this was while he was in school!

“When I left, I joined another company called Parkway Projects for roughly three to four years before venturing out with two partners to start AppZone. It was called Price & Network then; that was in 2008”, he said.

So, since 2008, Wale has basically been running in the capacity of CTO and Co-founder, for AppZone. This is just a very short summary of his bio.

The Interview:

TE: What has been your experience as Appzone’s CTO, knowing that you’ve been part of the team building products that are now empowering the biggest financial service players in Africa?

Wale Onawunmi: It’s been quite exciting, and we have come a long way from 2008. One of the interesting things is the fact that we’ve been able to, always, push ourselves; when it comes to technology, we try to innovate to find solutions to existing problems.

In my role, that has always been a core thing; how do we use the things that are happening now to find solutions to problems that we find in our society? We decided to focus on the financial industry; by building custom solutions on the cloud for financial institutions and that was how we started.

At that time, cloud technology was new, and there was a lot of skepticism about its workability, security and so many things around it. This is the same trend we see with blockchain and a lot of things we have done in the industry which is about pushing the boundaries of what technology can bring to the fore.

Technology is about breaking the norms, and cycles and improving processes so there can be good, reliable, and efficient operations generally.  

My experience so far has solidified the fact that technology is a way to transform any society from the third world to the first world and we are pushing the boundaries of the industry, to get to where it needs to be.

TE: AppZone is actually a digital disruptor, but what was the acceptability rate in the industry when you first introduced the in your markets?

Wale Onawunmi: So, the interesting thing is this, like you rightly said, change is just difficult. Right? It’s inevitable, but then, people sort of need to be convinced. So, one thing we’ve been able to do, as a company, we always strive to provide value first. We don’t implement technology for the sake of technology, it’s actually the value that drives the adoption itself.

I’ll give you an example; when we started with the cloud service, which is our core banking on the cloud, it was different from what the norm was, for the institutions that were on it; either they had it hosted internally, or they had some software they were running, and they were driving.

But the reason why it caught on and it provided value, was because we looked at the problems that they had, they needed a solution that could cater to all their needs: a one-stop solution, something integrated into other systems that allow them to integrate third parties, and just all work together.

So, when we came up with our solution, that’s what we brought to the fore and even though it was different, the values it brought, and the fact that we did introduce those new things that were sort of the things that were the changes on their own, but they came with the value made them see that this was something worth trying.

And, of course, we’ve been fortunate to have clients; I call then partners, that are early adopters. They just want to take up new things and see how those things work. The same thing with our card issuance solution that’s in the market that was pioneered by GT, the first of its kind.

And then what you find is initially, everybody was a bit skeptical of exactly how it works, but the moment the value is there, and the ability for people to get their cards in two minutes, without intervention, or any middleman, anybody involved, also made it sure that on its own, it was enough to drive adoption, right.

Finally, with Zone, the same thing. The value Zone brings, even on the blockchain network, is the fact that it improves reliability over what is currently existing, and the fact that the back-office operations are seamless.

So, when you take these things, the values speak for themselves. What then happens is that the adoption is just natural because that’s like the next step and that’s what we’ve been able to do in the industry.

TE: How were you able to harness talents to achieve all this?

Wale Onawunmi: One thing that has worked and something we started early was to work with young talent. When I say talent; no experience, raw talent from schools and universities. What we started with earlier was investing in nothing but knowledge transfer; learning, and skills acquisition, for the new talents coming in.

So as far back as 2008, we went to schools to recruit the fresh graduates that were very sharp and had a flair for technology. Off the back of that, we already figured we would need to invest in doing a training.

We had a one-year program that had different curriculums, projects, and things we put them through to get them up to speed. Then, of course, it was a risky investment.

Luckily, we started off in 2008 already, thinking about how to grow talent. We invested quite a bit, in fact, that was the plan to invest in young talent, not necessarily experienced. So we went to schools, leveraging the fact that there were smart young individuals there that we could then train.

We had a one-year training program, which we’ve brought down to like six to eight months, that had different projects and courses. The whole idea was to invest in these young talents and bring them up to speed and then empower them with the ability to build the sophisticated things we work on.

It has paid off, of course, there has always been the risk of them leaving, again, wanting to do Masters or wanting to go to other bigger companies, those are just risks. But what we’ve seen is the pool of talent that we could always rely on to deliver on all the things, of course, we had some experienced hands, but then again, we keep a very healthy ratio.

TE: In 2008, AppZone was arguably ahead of its time with the cloud-based technology products you built for banks. Now, you have developed this Layer-One Blockchain Protocol. So why blockchain and why now?

Wale Onawunmi: As you mentioned, in 2008, the cloud was something new, and people didn’t understand it and they were skeptical. But now, it’s a common thing and is taken for granted. Something similar is happening with Blockchain and these are the only things, the same skepticism, and the lack of understanding.

But I will tell you something interesting about blockchain. So, the technology, without going into too much technical detail, is just a technology that allows parties that normally would only be able to work together with some intermediary or trust somebody providing a trust level, to work together directly.

Now, what that means is that typically, like in banking, you would have had bank A and B, sort of interconnecting with somebody in the middle, which is what we traditionally called a Switch to facilitate communication between them or transactions between them.

The reason why you have that is that somebody in the middle must provide a track record of how those transactions are going and settle the banks as things progress.

The interesting thing about blockchain is; Blockchain is basically technology automating that central role. So, what that has done is, the two banks can connect, without necessarily having somebody in the middle, because the technology already facilitates that. And that’s the interesting thing because this thing I’m saying doesn’t just apply to payments or finance or financial systems, it applies to almost everywhere you have two parties interacting with one another.

What you’re about to see is blockchain is just starting out like everybody’s sort of figuring out how it’s going to play in the industry, but what it does for us and the financial industry and for us as an infrastructure company is that it’s like the bedrock of like the next level of innovation and the full automation of the industry itself.

Again, what it does is everything else you have that’s based on middlemen or being in the middle trying to drive things to happen because the technology itself does not make it possible to automate that process.

With blockchain, what you have are parties interacting with one another directly with no need for manual intervention or a third party. That is the essence of automation itself. What you see is once that comes in, it drives down the costs of doing those things, because then you must invest in that central team.

The second thing it does is improve reliability, because then the failure points are lower, because you’ve removed the middle ones, therefore, everybody just interacts with everybody, right? That, in turn, is also a very significant value.

Now, why we are looking at that is because we’ve seen the future and we strongly believe that with this technology, the landscape can change, absolutely for the better.

As an infrastructure provider and an enabler, that’s what we’ve been doing since we started, enabling companies in the industry to better provide their service. We think it is just what we need to do, to sort of set the stage for this future where transactions are completely reliable. Everything is integrated and interoperable, the operations are seamless and frictionless, that’s how we see it.

So why now? It’s because right now, everything is in play, to make this practically usable for the industry and we’re just pushing it to make sure that we can stay at the fore and bring all the companies; fintech, and banks in the industry to the fore and one thing I’ve always been excited about is the fact that when it comes to payments and banking generally. This side of the world and African countries have been able to, especially Nigeria, dominate on the payment side, as far as innovation is. This is just a leap in that direction, to sort of push it even further.

TE: I know on the day of the launch about 20 banks were already integrated. I also understand Zone is being deployed outside Nigeria; you’re taking the advantage of the African Free Continental Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) in trying to connect some other banks in Africa. How far have you gone with your projections in the markets?

Wale Onawunmi: Yes, the idea is, of course, to expand across Africa and possibly beyond Africa. For now, we’ve been focused mainly on Nigeria in the short term, and in Nigeria, as you said, we signed up, virtually all the commercial banks.

Now, we’re not trying to exclude other financial institutions, one of the things we’re doing is the network is not just for commercial banks, the network is to include all financial institutions, that can participate and play on the network.

The way we like to see the network, this network belongs to everybody and one of the beauties of blockchain is the fact that you can set up a network that has all the participants as part of the network itself, a core part of the network. So, for us, our focus is to expand the network to include mostly all the financial institutions that are regulated, in it.

Yes, we’ve already gotten the commercial banks to sign up, but we also want to extend this to fintech, OFIs, and others, because we see them also playing a major role in financial inclusion and even the adoption of financial services in the industry.

Then subsequently, we are looking at expanding. We are also expanding a couple of partnerships with entities that can help expand that across the continent.

When we look at numbers, well, the numbers we have so far are more around commercial banks, which you already mentioned. But again, when it comes to OFIs, we have signed up a couple of them and that’s numbers here. I know a couple of them that are quite eager and interested in also leveraging this new platform to provide their services.

Fintechs are interested, we also have OFIs that are leveraging our core banking platform, which is Mile One, also interested in leveraging the network because then it just complements each other.

While we are currently pioneering on the network, we’ve pioneered our initial use case, which is facilitating ATM cash withdrawals across the network, which is if you go to Bank A with a card that belongs to bank B then that can be run through the network.

The other thing we’re also doing is expanding the use cases because the use cases are not just limited to one use case, any form of transaction that can happen between those banks, is a financial use case.

So again, what we’re also focusing on is expanding those use cases, and driving those use cases across the industry.

As I said, the major benefit number one, even with just what we have, is the fact that transactions are inherently more reliable, just by the nature of the network itself. So, the fact that the network doesn’t have a middleman in play, or a central hub makes it such that it’s more reliable because you reduce the failure points.

The second thing that’s very interesting is the fact that the back-office operations are seamless and frictionless. When I talk about the back office, some of the things that come to your mind is the fact that there’s always this issue of disputes and complaints; you try to use the ATM, your card gets stuck, and you can’t get cash, but then you get debited or something, then you go to a POS, you do a transaction and you get debited, but then you can get cash.

One thing we’ve also made sure; because the system already has the same record, like the way the blockchain is, basically we’re able to tell what the status of the transaction is, at any point in time.

What that has done is allowed us to provide a system that sorts of auto-resolves disputes. And what that in turn does is it makes the system more what would you call it more, more usable, friendly, and more reliable ultimately, because then what that means is that even when those things happen, because then you can do much about an ATM behaving, or a POS not getting transactions from the network, but you are relatively certain that the back end would resolve it in a minimal time as possible.

TE: Is there any way that regulation is happening in that direction to ensure speedy resolution of disputes? Do you have a timeline to ensure that these things are resolved?

Wale Onawunmi: Interestingly, from a regulatory perspective, there are already some things in to ensure customers get feedback and attention, I think currently it is 48 hours or so. What that means is that when you log a complaint, a bank is bound to treat it within those number of hours. You go to what we call your issuer bank and a complaint is lodged on your behalf against the other bank where you used the terminal, which could be the ATM or the POS and then they investigate and get back to see if it was valid or not because again, you don’t want a scenario where people just report falsely and you’re sort of reversing transactions.

So, all that must happen within a couple of hours, let’s say 48 maximum. But that’s also established by the regulators already. As I said, the interesting thing with our system is, what we’ve done is automate this. Again, the beauty of technology is that you can solve a lot of real problems with it and that’s the whole idea; with automation, we realize there’s no need to have a lot of manual input there when technology can serve its purpose.

So, what our system can do is make sure that this thing is resolved, really way before that time requirement. In summary, think of it like say, when those things happen, and your money doesn’t come out at the ATM, the system can detect those things, and automatically sends the reversal that needs to happen to the backend system.

It’s not something you need to complain about because that already happens. Now, if it is environmental, for some reason you still go ahead and complain, maybe you didn’t observe it, what then happens is that by the time the issuer bank tries to log the request, the system has already treated it. It also saves the acquirer bank from having to treat requests that have already been treated, the system automatically identifies that those things have already been treated, and then the banks can tell the customers that everything is fine.

The beauty of the system is the fact that it has automated things that people do manually at the back office, and are not able to do quickly enough, because they get overwhelmed with the issues coming in. So, imagine that you have the adoption, just like you said, there’s more adoption of POS on digital payments and things like that, and then that adoption is also increasing in numbers because it’s like a percentage.

There are several issues that come up and they get overwhelmed because it is a manual process that is happening at the back, they can then in turn meet the turnaround time that has been stipulated, but then this is all taken out when you have a system that can run this in an automated way and worst cases, all we have to do is just make sure the computing resource is sufficient, which is something that can just be bought, rather than having to worry about the human beings that how to make sure it works.

TE: What other services are you likely to provide in the future? What are the things to expect from AppZone?

Wale Onawunmi: In AppZone, we are looking at focusing now. One of the things we’ve done is, we started as a custom software development house in 2008 for financial institutions. We evolved from that to being a cloud servicing company with a product called Banking and Card Issuance, etc., and now evolved to a payment infrastructure company, which is a blockchain network currently.

But again, what it means is that in this focus, what makes us stand out, and when we believe strongly, is the ability to focus on what it is that we intend to deliver. We believe that for us the focus here is on the payments infrastructure, it’s the primary thing we are focusing on. So yes, we could have been involved in a lot of other things, but our focus is to push that to exactly where it needs to be.

Remember, what we’ve prided ourselves in over the years, is being an enabler of the industry. So, we’ll continue to do that and how we hope to do that is by establishing this network as a payment infrastructure that drives, empowers, and enriches the ability of those financial institutions to provide services and that’s what we’ll keep doing.

So, when you think of it, like what are the things we’re going to be working on or pushing out, there’ll be along these lines, whereas those Fintech companies are running our services or thinking of new ideas, we are providing the infrastructure to facilitate coming up with those new ideas of services. So, things around improving durability, reliability, and usability, are just empowering them to go ahead and innovate, because that’s what they need.

TE: Looking at the fintech industry in Nigeria, what are your predictions? What are things we’re likely going to see in the next five years?

Wale Onawunmi:Right now, there are a couple of unicorns here and there and it’s tied to the value that’s been brought into the system. We will see a couple more but not like an avalanche.

There are a lot of fintech companies out there and they would keep increasing. What is also helping is the fact that digital payments are growing fintech from a definition point of view is running financial services leveraging technology, and we expect that to grow.

Another thing you’d find is there will still be a couple of players that can utilize the technology and differentiate in the market.

Because there are lots of players, it’s going to be difficult to differentiate, it’s going to be a little bit saturated. Lots of players will stand out, especially when it comes to innovative stuff.

I see a future where blockchain is a driving force, a lot of things around leveraging the blockchain network to provide low-cost financial services from loans to even concepts like DeFi, which is a centralized finance, to allow people to have access to finance in ways that weren’t possible before because of the cost of providing such a service.

Another thing that has also shaped the landscape is the current economic climate that makes it such that what you now have is a lot more focused on the growth of the companies from a positive unique economic point of view.

Unlike people when companies were springing up and the idea was just about growth, not necessarily about the bottom line, now, there’s a lot more focus on the bottom line.

It has now about been able to generate and create value and cut your cost.

The companies that will still stand out are the ones that can provide the right unit of economics and at the same time leverage new technology.

TE: What do you make of eNaira? What do you think can be done to drive adoption?

Wale Onawunmi: There’s a lot of misunderstanding on the adoption of the eNaira but again, it’s what happens when a new product is introduced.

eNaira has been around for quite some time but it’s still relatively new and it’s something that’s still being figured out generally. One of the things that must be taken into consideration is the feedback from the industry; what are the things plaguing the adoption?

There’s a lot of potential from a CBDC. A lot more effort into providing those innovative touchpoints that drive the adoption is needed. Also, I see the need for a marriage of what the traditional Fiat is, and what the CBDC is. We need to have a network that connects all of them first.

It brings together thought leaders, inventors, innovators, and other key players in the technology sector, making it one of the most significant gathering spots on the globe.

Over 10,000 investors from across the world attended the GITEX Global 2022 event, which also provided entrepreneurs with over 25,000 leads for investment meetings and partnership opportunities.

In previous years, participants would have had to travel to Dubai to compete in the tournament for a chance to win $200,000 in funding and a mentorship prize.

But on the 12th of May 2022, the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX), in partnership with the Lagos State Government (LSG) and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), organized the pitch event in Lagos at the Eko Innovation Centre.

The judges at the pitch event were; Akeem Hassan, Technical Assistant to Lagos State State Governor on Innovation and Technology; Tunbosun Alake, the special adviser to the Governor on Innovation and Technology; Segun Cole, Co-founder Fund the Gap Alliance; Amos Udok, Representative NITDA; Ireayo Oladunjoye, Head, of Startups Lagos state employment Trust fund; Oguntade Adeseye, Unit head, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship ONDI, and Olorunnisomo Olaoluwa Co-Founder, Seedbuilders Innovation and Foundation, which had about twenty-seven (27) startups pitch their ideas.

Two Nigerian technology start-ups, Paddy Cover and Pricepally.com emerged winners and received from Dubai World Trade Centre an all-expenses paid trip to Dubai to compete in the tournament for a chance to win $200,000 in funding and a mentorship reward.

The two winners, Paddy Cover and PricePally, will be joined by thirteen (13) additional teams for a complete, all-expenses-paid opportunity to compete in GITEX, making the total delegation from Lagos State fifteen (15) startups, the largest in the history of the Lagos State Government.

The list of the thirteen (13) additional startups includes: truQ, Quadloop, and Imperial EdTech, which are the second, third, and fourth-place finishers in the GITEX Lagos State pitch session; Wellness Health Technologies, D’Aggregate, and LiveBic, which are currently enrolled in the EIC acceleration program; AppZone, Kodobe, Farmz2U, Cdial, RxAll Inc, Curacel, and Evolvestack.

Five (5) out of the fifteen (15) startups supported by the Lagos State Government advanced to the semifinals of the competition. Paddycover, Pricepally, LiveBic, Wellness Health Technologies, and Evolvestack are the startups.

NFW is one of the largest gatherings of players in the fintech ecosystem in Nigeria as well as Africa and this edition will hold in a hybrid format which offers you the opportunities to attend physically or be a part of the event online.

You can register to attend the #NFW2022 here.

The Nigeria Fintech Week (#NFW2022) theme for this year is reflective of Deloitte’s Fintech Report which highlights customer inertia and infrastructure as one of the failings of the global fintech ecosystem.

The theme also speaks to the need to take on the issue of sustainable impact across sectors as the world finds its footing in the ‘next normal’.

In light of this, this year’s edition would practically touch on emerging technologies spanning different verticals and e-government in the African contexts.

The hybrid event which has Fintech Association of Nigeria, FintechNGR, and Fintech Associates Limited, as its organizing partners, is set to host about ten thousand attendees.

Some of the features of Nigeria Fintech Week which are applicable to businesses and professionals alike include opportunities to expand business & professional networks, interact and learn from top industry leaders & respected icons, and advance thought leadership.

The NFW team is also big on promoting emerging voices and experts, so you can send in your application if interested in being a part of the speaker line-up this year.

Other aspects of the event more particular to corporate brands are product acquisition/promotion, brand exposure & publicity, technology launches/showcase, fast-track customer acquisition, co-create solutions off the event, foster new B2B and B2C partnerships, as well as media interviews and appearances. For brand participation, you are encouraged to kindly send an expression of interest while slots are still open.

Other key features include TechSpark – a full-day hands-on session for students on deepening technical skills & tech-enabled businesses which will be held at select campuses, pavilions at the physical location in Landmark by international investors and embassies, as well as regulatory parleys and Ecosystem Hour.

The 2021 edition had over 8000 participants in attendance both online and physically from 20 countries and had notable highlights such as the launch of DigiStuds – a digital academy training project for undergraduates in Nigerian universities, Ecosystem Hour with representatives from other local/regional ecosystem bodies, and a mini TechSpark.

It also had practical sessions on NFTs, Disruption Disrupted, discourses on fintech in the capital market, femtech, payments and a lot more.

Past editions of the Nigeria Fintech Week had given birth to Fintech Association of Nigeria, the umbrella body for about 300 players in the Fintech space from the twenty-one sectors of the economy, the Africa Fintech Network, the body of thirty-two national Fintech Associations across Africa, Fintech Adoption Roadmap Policy in the Capital Market, helped young startups to launch out and scale up, rallying point on regulatory issues amongst others. 

Some of the sponsors at NFW2021 include Zenith Bank, Mastercard, Ecobank, Aella, Access Bank, Unified Payments, TeamApt, VFD Group, Softalliance, CreditRegistry, Jackson, Etti & Edu, FastCredit, AELEX,Coinnews, DLM, Odua Investment Company Limited,  AppZone and numerous product exhibitors, in addition to ecosystem/media partners like NIBSS, NCC, TechEconomy.ng, Proshare, Nairametrics.

Uche Elendu shared this thought during his presentation at the recently concluded Digital Pay Expo summit, a two-day event, which sought to discuss the possibility of accessing finance without a third party across the African continent through Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

As more Nigerians get financially included, customers have continued to move away from cash and checks toward electronic payments.

This trend is a positive development for banks and the central bank of Nigeria (CBN); however, as card and online transactions grow, so does the number of disputable transactions and the incidence of fraud, putting pressure on dispute processes.

Speaking about the adoption of blockchain technology to foster a speedy payment settlement process, Uche Elendu, said “Financial institutions across the continent have continued to evolve, leveraging technology. They have metamorphosed from the days of a heavy analogue process to a more digitized era, and with the continuous increase in the volume of banking transactions, It remains pertinent to continuously adopt newer and more sophisticated technology infrastructure to remain dependable, especially with payment settlements. For us at Appzone, we are firm believers in blockchain technology. Its decentralized nature not only makes it faster, cheaper, and transparent but also makes it sophisticated enough to enable real-time settlement”.

Speaking further, Uche said “Having rolled out Zone – Africa’s first blockchain technology platform for payment processing in 2021, partner banks who have onboarded with us have seen a drastic change in their payment settlement process. Zone’s innovative architecture will reduce complaints from customers and provide banks with an opportunity to deliver delightful experiences on payment channels while also driving down costs”.

Developed in line with Appzone’s recent evolution into a payment infrastructure company, Zone is Africa’s first decentralized payment network that allows inter-bank transactions to be processed directly between banks on the Blockchain without the involvement of any intermediary.

With Zone, players in the industry should expect a reliable and scalable payment network that enables frictionless and instant payments, within and between every African country.

Osoba joins AppZone from Tek Experts where he led Marketing and Corporate Communications across the company’s Africa region.

In his new role, Osoba will oversee the marketing, branding, and storytelling efforts at AppZone.

Founded in 2008, Appzone, Africa’s no.1 Fintech Software Engineering firm has evolved into a payment infrastructure company.

Its Layer-1 Blockchain network digitizes Fiat payments and enables the transition to digital currencies while connecting previously excluded financial institutions into an all-inclusive payment ecosystem.

In December of 2021, Appzone launched ZONE, Africa’s first decentralized payment network which is set to disrupt Africa’s fintech space.

Before joining Tek Experts, Olayiwola  Osoba led marketing, corporate communications, sales, and partnership efforts for several global and local technology companies.

During his time as Andela’s Regional Marketing Manager, he was responsible for the company’s regional marketing operations and brand-building efforts, including end-to-end management of talent supply generation projects, co-marketing activities, and all CSR initiatives in West Africa.

During his time at Intel, Osoba supported Intel’s PC acceleration project in Africa. The project delivered strong growth records in the adoption per household in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya between 2017 and 2018 and ensured sustainability in an increasingly demanding marketplace.

Osoba is passionate about the growth of Africa’s tech ecosystem and spends his time volunteering, supporting and offering FREE specialized advisory and marketing consulting services to a long list of tech startups in Africa.

Olayiwola Osoba holds a bachelor’s degree from Babcock University and an MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology in Washington DC.

Osoba is a member of The Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK, and a member of the Advertising Practitioners Commission of Nigeria.

Osoba’s career experience will come in handy with guiding AppZone’s marketing and storytelling goals and executing the strategies that will be key to the success of the company’s transformation.

Investee companies will initially be located across Nigeria and Ghana, with the fund set to target the wider West Africa region.

Recent advances in digital information technology provide an opportunity to both build and scale solutions to everyday challenges faced by millions of Africans – in particular, the aggregation of fragmented value chains, the formalisation of large sectors of the continent’s economy and the provision of much-needed access to financial services for both consumers and businesses.

The Constant Ventures fund has a unique structure that enables investment either directly in talented entrepreneurs and compelling start-ups across West Africa or through its proprietary venture studio, which serves as a catalyst to combine best-in-class entrepreneurs, ideas and capital to quickly build winning start-ups.

Constant Ventures created the fund on the back of its successful track record as an angel investor, as well as a respected developer of technology businesses.

To-date, it has invested US$3.2 million in nine Nigerian start-ups*, with a return of 5.6x, which is projected to return 15x after the next funding round.

Ike Echeruo, Chairman of the Constant Group and co-founder and Managing Partner of Constant Ventures, says:

“We are very excited to be announcing this fund today.  It has been a decade in the making, the result of deep-dive research and due diligence in anticipation of this moment when we knew that advances in information technology would enable start-ups across West Africa to commercially address real societal needs. 

“Technology was always going to provide the answer to so many of the critical issues faced by millions of people across Africa today.  We are now on the cusp of a paradigm shift with recent advances across information technology presenting a unique investment window.  We have looked at what has worked in other geographies.  Now, refined and optimised for Africa, we have modelled a fund to invest in businesses that will both improve the lives of millions of people and deliver outstanding returns for investors.”

Now in its 7th year, the Africa Fintech Summit brings the entrepreneurs and opportunities revolutionizing finance in Africa to the world’s stage, through a series of pan-African summits, roundtables, virtual events, and investor missions.

The Africa Fintech Summit Awards platform, is a longstanding tradition designed to recognize African fintech stakeholders for their actions in enabling the continent’s start-up ecosystem, accelerating innovation, and driving financial inclusion and literacy.

AppZone was chosen to receive the 2022 “Excellence in Blockchain Technology” award in recognition of its efforts in leading the adoption of blockchain technology for payment processing on the continent and achieving interoperability with the infrastructure of existing traditional financial ecosystem stakeholders on its blockchain payment network, ZONE.

Zone is Africa’s first private Blockchain network that connects Banks and fintechs together without any intermediary to enable frictionless digital payments while empowering previously excluded financial institutions to participate.

It has been adopted by over 16 commercial banks in Nigeria and is expanding to other financial institutions, fintechs and commercial banks across Africa.

Speaking on the Appzone Group’s recognition, Co-Founder and CEO Obi Emetarom, expressed his delight about the company’s emergence amongst so many other well-deserving companies creating value in the ecosystem.

“The increasing maturity of the fintech ecosystem in Africa is impressive, and we are happy to be a part of the story of progress for the continent. Whether as an entrepreneur, investor, traditional financial institution, or customer, it is an exciting time to be involved in African Fintech. Even more rewarding is the joy of getting recognition for the solutions we create at AppZone.  We remain committed to our mission of connecting every financial store of value in Africa to the rest of the world. Recognitions like this will only spur us on to give more to Africa’s fast-evolving Fintech landscape”, Obi said.

Every year since its inception, the Africa Fintech Summit brings together the most active and influential minds driving the growth of Africa’s fintech sector while recognizing excellence in entrepreneurship and innovation across the Fintech ecosystem in Africa.

Awardees at the Africa Fintech Summit 2022 were selected with a hybrid approach of leveraging public nominations and feedback from the AFTS Advisory Board.