#75: eTranzact - How Nigeria's pioneering payments and switching platform is serving businesses and governments across Africa

Afrobility: Africa Tech and Business

Overview: Today, we’re going to explore eTranzact - the African payments and switching platform. We’ll discuss the story across the following areas:

1. First, Nigerian payments context

2. Second, eTranzact's early history

3. Third, Product & monetization strategy

4. Fourth, Competitive positioning

5. Fifth, Overall outlook

This episode was recorded on Feb 11, 2024

Companies discussed: eTranzact, Interswitch, Unified Payment Services Limited (UPSL), Systemspecs (Remita), Paystack, Flutterwave, Moniepoint, Paga, OPay, MTN & Airtel.

Business concepts discussed: Mobile money, Payments Collections, Payments ecosystem, payments partnerships strategy, card networks, payments infrastructure, low-end disruption, banking regulation & payments M&A strategy

Conversation highlights:

• (00:57) - What is eTranzact and why we’re talking about it

• (07:43) - Context of Nigeria’s payment sector before eTranzact

• (16:45) - eTranzact founding story

• (35:46) - Growth and geographic expansion

• (45:10) - Product strategy

• (01:02:56) - Monetization strategy

• (01:20:41) - Competition

• (1:31:10) - Bankole’s overall thoughts and outlook

• (1:34:38) - Olumide’s overall thoughts and outlook

• (1:43:20 - Recommendations and small wins

Olumide’s recommendations & small wins:

• Interested in investing in Africa Tech with Olumide: Read about Adamantium fund & contact me at [e-mail]. Founders looking for funding: If you're a B2B founder working on Education, Health, Finance or food, please contact me for funding at [e-mail]

• Checkout my FIREDOM book = FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) + Freedom = personal finance and financial independence book. Website, Read: Substack Newsletter & Buy: Print, eBook or Audiobook)

• Recommendation: Never Enough (Loren Allred). Incredible. I can listen to it on repeat for the whole day.

• Recommendation: La Bachata (Maniel Turizo). Dope shit.

• Recommendation: "Someone You Loved". Not the original but a fabulous cover. Best line, "I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved". Listen to the 3rd verse when they sing simultaneously. Incredible!

• Recommendation: A Million Miles Away movie. It is a biographical drama film about the life of José Hernández, a Mexican-American migrant farm

• Small win: Booked Cirque Du Soleil show. Looking forward to it.

Bankole’s recommendations & small wins:

• Recommendation: Comma - Burna Boy && Wolfram|Alpha as the Way to Bring Computational Knowledge Superpowers to ChatGPT

• Small win: Clean shaven + the Nigerian AFCON semifinal win only to lose in the final a few hours after recording :(

• Other content: History of Web Acquiring in Nigeria && Atlas Copco on Invest Like The Best && An Empirical Examination of Why Mobile Money Schemes Ignite in Some Developing Countries but Flounder in Most

Listeners: We’d love to hear from you. Email [e-mail] with feedback!

Founders & Operators: We'd love to hear about what you're working on, email us at [e-mail]

Investors: It would be great to link up with you. Contact us at [e-mail]

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