Payments Forum Nigeria (PAFON), the cross-industry platform focused on addressing issues that require broad cooperation and coordination across many constituents in the payments industry, has attracted sponsorships from Digital Encode Limited, Cybervergent and Payble.
Financial industry experts are warming up for the first edition of PAFON, scheduled to take place at Oriental Hotel, Lekki Road, Lagos on Thursday, March 21, 2024, by 9am.
The Forum aims to provide an inside look at the industry, offering perspectives from key stakeholders, including payment networks, technology innovators, leading merchants, issuers, acquirers, and payment processors.
Throughout the years, the finance world has shifted into something much more than just banking and big corporations.
Speaking ahead of the star-studded PAFON 1.0, with the theme: “Payments: Trust, Security and Privacy in AI Era,” Dr. Adewale Peter Obadare, the Chief Visionary Officer [CVO], Digital Encode Limited, said that customers want to be assured that their sensitive information, such as credit card numbers and personal details, is treated with utmost care hence security has become paramount in the payments industry.
“Secure payment processing ensures that data breaches are minimized, instilling confidence in customers to keep coming back. Nigerian financial institutions reported ₦159 billion ($201.5 million) loss to fraud cases since 2020, according to the Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC). This is what the experts must tackle, and customer awareness is key too,” he said.
Based on a report by Gartner, by 2024, 40% of privacy compliance technology will rely on AI, up from 5% in 2019, and by 2025, 60% of large organisations will use at least one privacy-enhancing computation technique in analytics, business intelligence, or cloud computing, and financial services industry is no exempted.
On the other hand, Roosevelt Elias, the co-founder of Payble, described PAFON as a ‘must-attend’ Forum due to the ‘issues listed to be discussed being germane and requiring critical attention.
“For instance, building financially inclusive products requires a mix of technology and illiteracy. The industry can’t achieve this by working in silos; we just have to unite to achieve the set target on financial inclusion, particularly for rural dwellers,” he said.
Digital Encode (a leading consulting and integration that specialises in the design, management, and security of business-critical architecture); Cybervergent (a company dedicated to helping protect business sensitive data from cyber-attacks, including customer information, financial records and intellectual property); Payble (a fintech startup that modernises local government payments such as creating citizen-centric payment experiences, delivering flexible billing and simplified rate collection, will be joined at PAFON 1.0 by Inlaks, an IT company that offers core banking, fraud management, cybersecurity, cloud, data centre, enterprise risk management, amongst other industry players.
“Our goal is to enable information exchange and knowledge sharing on key industry insights issues amongst key stakeholders, to ensure a collaborative and proactive approach to push for policies that enable growth, tackling/mitigating fraud and limiting occurrences and losses,” said Mr. Chike Onwuegbuchi, the co-founder of TechCastle Foundation, organisers of Payment Forum Nigeria (PAFON).
Onwuegbuchi said that the Forum is driven by the reasons to; “educate and inform financial service players and other stakeholders on various issues and trends (both locally and globally); proactively share data/information amongst banks, Fintechs and other service providers, to enable prompt responses to prevent and/or limit (customer-related) losses; and discuss key Payment’s security trends.”
“Speakers will be drawn from among industry players such as banks, Fintechs, mobile money operators, blockchain experts, Cybersecurity, etc., as we expect attendees from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN); e-Banking Heads; Chief Compliance Officers of banks in Nigeria; Chief Internal Auditors of banks in Nigeria; and Office of The National Security Adviser.
Others are Switching companies; the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission; Licensed Mobile Payment Operators; Electronic Payments Providers; Information Security Experts; Consumer Protection; Financial Policy and Regulation; Information Technology; Legal Services; Banking Supervision; Corporate Communication; Shared Services Office; Blockchain Security Experts, etc,” he added.
PAFON Organisers said in a release on Tuesday that Participation is free; however, intending participant is required to pre-register using the link here: https://bit.ly/4c4N19H
For sponsorship, please contact: Mr. Chike Onwuegbuchi via: 08123355522 or Peter Oluka: 08184346261 or email: africaTechAllianceForum@gmail.com
