Access and OPay say banks must become 'invisible'
Executives from Access Holdings and OPay told a Lagos panel that banks must build finance into daily transactions to compete with digital platforms.
The facts
- According to TechCabal, Access Holdings' Daniel Awe said banks must offer services when customers need them, instead of waiting for people to visit a branch or open an app.
- OPay Nigeria's Chukwudinma Okafor said OPay sent developers, tech staff and sales teams to markets across Nigeria to watch how traders work; traders asked for different sounds to signal successful and failed POS transactions.
- Awe said conventional core banking systems alone are not enough to compete with fintechs, and that modernising must be gradual to protect reliability and compliance.
- Awe said the Securities and Exchange Commission is more open to crypto activity, while the Central Bank of Nigeria is more cautious and is looking at stablecoin use cases in a regulatory sandbox.
Case notes · Danny's take
Why it matters
Banks have already moved onto the phone. The next fight is about where the bank shows up: inside paying school fees or restocking a shop, not inside an app you have to open. OPay's market visits are the lesson. The feature traders asked for was a different beep, not new technology. Most people will miss that the winning product is often the boring one.
For traders
The panel offered no market data, so there is nothing to trade here. If you follow Nigerian stablecoin plans, watch for any formal word from the central bank on its sandbox, not panel remarks.
For builders
Embedded finance is the opening: payments built into the tasks people already do, such as school fees and stock purchases. Spend time with real users in markets, as OPay did, and treat security and bank partnerships as part of the product.
Not financial advice. Do your own investigation.
This story was summarised with AI from TechCabal's reporting and checked against our editorial policy. Danny's take reflects his views. Disclaimer.
Danny Walter
Founder of Moon Republic, Volt Terminal and Moon Republic Academy. Author of The Market Is a Crime Scene and After the Applause.