By Providence Obuh
To enhance financial literacy, it is imperative to assist women get into the financial ecosystem, said General Manager Visa West Africa, Mr. Ade Ashaye, in this interview with FV, stating, “If you are able to facilitate the women in getting into the financial ecosystem, with that comes the family, household, focusing on that is important.”

What is Visa’s commitment to financial literacy and is Nigeria in your scheme?

If we look at the level of financial literacy and development of the financial ecosystem, particularly for consumers,’ we are still at the early stages of the electronic ecosystem, and there has been a good deal of progress, with that progress there is a need for financial literacy as part of that progress. Our commitment is to focus on financial literacy, provide and teach individuals systems that help them to learn how to spend, save and budget properly. If you have the basic understanding everyone will learn from it and that is one of the purposes of the progress. We have been doing our programmes for decades in Visa and we have had programmes localised in about 30 countries, our initial commitment was to take 20 million people through our financial literacy programmes by 2013 and we have achieved that a year early and to date we are approaching 30 million people who have done visa financial literacy programmes.

Ade Ashaye

You launched financial literacy apps over a year ago, what progress have you made so far?

That was a network localisation and one of the different network localisation that we do. Different things happen in different market, example: because South Africa is culturally a story telling culture, we localised our financial literacy activity to work in the form of industrial theatre, with the great adoption of technology in Nigeria we decided to localise our financial literacy activity working with Co-creation hub in Yaba to create a competition that had Nigerians who understand the issues and challenges better than anybody to create apps and games that help drive financial literacy and also help teach people some of the basics around financial literacy and that was last year. Three winners emerged from that competition, the response has been very positive and they will continue to develop the apps because the development of apps is an ongoing development. We plan to have another event in the next couple of months to get more publicly on the apps and work with stakeholders to look at the best ways of putting those apps out into the wider market.

How you see the Nigerian market in terms of financial literacy and card usage 

I have been within the visa system for about 20 years, I have worked in different countries but what makes Nigeria different is the fact that so many stakeholders are pushing in the same direction. Everybody is pushing to improve transparency, convenience and security, for me, that is why if you look at where we are in Nigeria, say seven years ago and where we are today, compare that to any other market I have worked in my several years in electronic market, I have not seen any market that has made such advancement so quickly and it is so because everybody is pushing in the same direction and I must tell you, there is room to grow further.

Looking at the microfinance sub sector, how does financial literacy come to play?

If you accept that we have moved very quickly, that means that everybody needs to catch up, when we say financial literacy, it means different things to different stakeholders, from a merchant perspective, I need to understand fully the value of acceptance of electronic payment over cash, that is different from a consumer perspective, where I need to understand the benefit of saving and budgeting appropriately and controlling my finances. There is a need to increase financial literacy in all different sectors of the economy and ensure that the knowledge and capabilities benefit in there are shared.

I look at micro financing entities as financial institutions similar to our client banks that focus on how to service different sub sector customers who have slightly different needs.  The trick is how do we help specifically take the message to ensure that their customers are able to benefit from what we are talking about. In the financial literacy space, it is the men who are usually excluded from the formal financial environment where you have the greatest needs.

What product does Visa have for microfinance banks in the country?

If you look at the plans that we have in place around making better use of technology to avail financial services, when you are in a better position to make use of financial technology with that comes the efficiencies, cost, convenience, which means that more people can be included. If your only tool is a tool which has certain characteristics, as you provide more tools perhaps, you suit it to bring in more people into the ecosystem and serve in that direction.

Financial literacy programmes for women, especially the rural woman?

There are a number of research programmes in a number of countries that would tell you, if you are able to facilitate the women getting into the financial ecosystem, with that comes the family, household, so focusing on financial literacy for women is important. We have supported that in a number of countries. Am on the advisory board of African Women’s Banking, the pure focus is supporting financial inclusion for women.

 Future plan

Number one plan for me is to build an office here, increase the number of Nigerians who are focused within Visa on supporting Nigeria. There are a number of product and services which are in the pipeline and would help provide that choice. Really the story is if you can provide choice, then you are in a position that the consumer and other merchant/stakeholders can find something that works for them. We will certainly provide education on the differences between prepared, debit and credit cards, the different between the two means you are paying for your goods and services upfront or you are paying from your bank account or you are effectively gaining from a line of credit.

Plans to grow the debit market

Debit is fundamental in Nigeria because from payment perspective, what you see is that people are used to the idea of spending the money they have, debit is a fundamental tool that enable people to get the convenience and the security of visa payment system from their debit cards.

Nigeria’s financial literacy landscape

In retail space that we have been involved to date, there has been significant progress over the short period of time and there is scope for continued progress. Other stakeholders particularly the CBN are pushing in that direction that landscape is in health free space with regards to opportunity to move forward.

Scorecard for micro financing in Nigeria

I think it will be unfair of me to give a scorecard without having to look at the microfinance sub sector. Where you have an industry that is trying to service customers need and customers that have choice, I think the customers would be able to hold cards.  So I think if the customers are there and they are making use of the industry, is a scorecard. When you have entities like ours who have the knowledge, capabilities and the tools to support and assist, will score the changes over time.