All is now set for the maiden edition of Payments Forum Nigeria (PAFON 1.0) to be held tomorrow, Thursday, March 21, 2024, at Oriental Hotel, Lekki, Lagos State, at 9 am.
The Payments Forum Nigeria is a cross-industry platform focused on addressing issues that require broad cooperation and coordination across many constituents in the payments industry.
PAFON 1.0 will provide participants with an inside look at the industry, offering perspectives from key stakeholders, including payment networks, technology innovators, leading merchants, issuers, acquirers, and payment processors.
Participation is free; however, preregistration can be done via the link: https://bit.ly/4c4N19H.
Organisers of the Forum said eminent personalities have been lined up as speakers at the event including Mr. Chibuzo Efobi, Director, Payments System Management, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), who will deliver the keynote address, while a Keynote Presentation shall be delivered by Festus Amede, Chairman, Committee of Chief Information Security Officers of Nigerian Financial institutions (CCISONFI).
Other speakers lined up for PAFON 1.0 include Ikenna Ndugbu, Chief Compliance Officer, Moniepoint MFB; Dr. Adewale Peter Obadare, Chief Visionary Officer (CVO), Digital Encode Limited; Peter Evbota, Sales Director at inq.Digital Nigeria Limited; Gbolabo Awelewa, Chief Solutions Officer, Cybervergent; and Fasasi Atanda, National President of AMMBAN, amongst others.
Throughout the years, the finance world has shifted into something much more than just banking and big corporations. Blockchain and the FinTech society have managed to create a new world that is much more inclusive, and full of opportunities.
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 organizations will use at least one privacy-enhancing computation technique in analytics, business intelligence, or cloud computing, and financial services industry is not exempted.
For instance, effective April 2024, Nigerian financial institutions will be mandated to implement stricter Know Your Customer (KYC) measures, requiring all customers to provide their Bank Verification Number or a national identification number (NIN) for account or wallet opening, following a circular by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“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 (PfN).
He 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 Payments security trends.”
The forum is organised by TechCastle Foundation and sponsored by Moniepoint, Digital Encode Limited, Cybervergent, Payble, inq.Digital Nigeria Limited, with support from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
