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By Chinwendu Obienyi
9 Payment Service Bank (9PSB), Nigeria’s foremost digital payment service bank has listed collaboration, innovation, branchless banking, women and youth empowerment, financial literacy, and the harmonisation of ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) databases as strategies to help to bridge the financial inclusion gap.
This year’s edition is themed: ‘Fintech: Resilience, Innovation & Diversification”, focused on financial inclusion, participated at the recently held Nigeria Fintech Week (NFW), alongside other industry players.
The Head of Business Development and Strategy, 9PSB, Akeem Salam, while delivering a paper titled: ‘Financial Inclusion: Bridging the Gap Through Resilience and Innovation,’ noted that 9PSB works relentlessly in fulfilling its primary mandate from CBN – driving financial inclusion.
Highlighting the major barriers to financial inclusion, Salam stated, “There are many barriers to financial inclusion, however, the major barriers are geological distance, high cost of services, gender and age discrimination, lack of trust and cumbersome requirements. Many financially excluded individuals do not trust the system. Trust is built through education. This is why 9PSB partners with government bodies to educate the financially excluded through empowerment programmes.
On changing the narrative with collaboration and innovation, Salam noted that the gap can be bridged through resilience and innovation, branchless banking, women/youth empowerment, financial literacy, and the harmonisation of ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) databases.
“At 9PSB, we understand the need to do things differently. We collaborate with other fintechs to open new markets and further deepen financial inclusion which is in line with our primary mandate.
9PSB is still open to more collaborations, which exist amongst competitors. These collaborations will foster financial inclusion through financial literacy,” he added.
The Nigeria Fintech Week is an annual event dedicated to bringing together industry leaders, innovators and stakeholders in the financial and technology sectors.
