By Winifred Imoulamen

Intermarc Consulting Limited has expressed readiness to kick off this year’s edition of its annual international conference on cards and epayments in Lagos.

The three day event which commences at the Eko Hotels, June 11 has the theme” Shared services: Optimising payment systems in Africa”.

Intermarc said that as and epayment systems have now taken centre stage in the economies of most African countries, banks and other financial institutions are consistently looking for solutions and value added services for the benefits of the market, which is also maturing and coming to terms with the reality of modernization with the benefit of security, speed and convenience.

The consulting firm, announced that the objective of this edition is to create the much needed awareness for the Central Bank of Nigeria Cashless Policy especially as it relates to the creation of a Central Switch and the prohibited gentiles for mobile money and agent banking in Nigeria. “We will also have sessions on how successful shared services implementations across the world can share their learning points with Africa”.

It also added that in order to maximize the potential benefits of epayment, the concept of shared services has been adopted in most implementations in the United Kingdom, Asia and Europe. We also see similar trends in South Africa. This concept is becoming more popular in the rest of Africa. The question however is “how do stakeholders cooperate to compete”.

The event is the biggest Card Exhibition in Africa  and will therefore include a high calibre of personnel; Deputy Governor of Central Bank, The Managing Director of NIBSS, Managing Directors of Banks as well as  other and leading epayment service providers from Nigeria and overseas.

The conference will feature Six Technical forums each focusing on specific payment systems.

Meanwhile, the main attraction of the event is the three day exhibition in the Orchid and Lantana halls of the new expo centre of the Eko Hotel, Victoria Island Lagos.

Over 50 exhibitors from countries like Portugal, China, Egypt, France, UK, Dubai, Morocco has been tipped to have indicated interests to exhibit the latest technologies in electronic payment. Some of the companies are; SIBS International, Master Card Worldwide, JCB, Samsung, Airtel, HPS, among others.

The central bank of Nigeria, CBN alongside major Nigerian banks like Diamond, Zenith, Skye, Access are also expected to attend the event.