By Laju Iren

TO an outsider, church administration is not a big deal. But for those directly involved, whether it is a small ministry or a mega church, it is a task that can be compared to David facing Goliath. Converting first timers to church members, keeping abreast with departments groups and programmes, providing welfare and counselling for families, among others, are some of the tough jobs involved.

However, for the 2.6 million churches with half a billion church members across the African continent, there might be no challenge as great as finding the right financial system to aid collections, expenditure and account reconciliation. Churches in Africa are reportedly scooping about   N25 bn annually, but most of this is handled in cash.

It is perhaps, for this unique market that Interswitch recently launched a bouquet of Church Solutions which was unveiled to stakeholders at a media briefing in Lagos recently. The company said the development was based on the appreciation of the unique requirements of religious organizations in Nigeria, in terms of enterprise resource planning and payment management.

Live demo of Interswitch church solutions

On the essence of the new solution, Group Head, Industry and Retail Chains at Interswitch, Mr. Paul Ohakim,  explained that  there are three variants of this solution, which churches can subscribe to. These include: Integration of Church accounting system to Interswitch Collections; Customized mobile app with integrated payment solution from Interswitch as well as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and payments solution  for Churches, developed in partnership with Asoriba.

Church financial analytics

The ERP solution features   Centralized church  data management,  Church financial analytics and reporting, Events planning and calendar management with notifications, detailed membership management, Group/ branch/parish management  and  easy online and offline donations and payments. The solution essentially enables ministries to manage church administration, membership, communication, finances and payments more seamlessly. Asoriba, the developers of the solution, with whom Interswitch has partnered are a young and innovative organization based in Accra, Ghana.

 For Asoriba’s co-founder, Mr. Nana Prempeh, this is more than business as usual. He said: “This is a calling for us; we want to help churches to win souls using technology as a tool. We currently have over 55,000 church members and 900 churches on our platform.”

“With the introduction of Interswitch Church Solutions, we are extremely excited to partner with as many churches in Nigeria to assist them in integrating virtually every aspect of their activities from communication within various branches as well as with church members to providing easier payment management and clear reporting and tracking, raising administrative standards and promoting accountability.”  Paul added.

Also commenting on the launch, the  Divisional CEO, Industry Vertical Markets of Interswitch, Mrs. Chinyere Don-Okhuofu remarked: “Our vision is an all-inclusive one that continues to expand to take cognizance of unique requirements of players in virtually every field of endeavour, particularly where payments are involved, not excluding religious organizations, where we have particularly identified an opportunity to add value, not only to the way payments are made and tracked, but to church management as a whole.”