Temiloluwa Gbadebo is an emerging leader in African fintech. His extensive knowledge of the Nigeria’s technological landscape has made him one of the most sought-after voices having successfully engineered numerous fintech project in Nigeria. In this conversation about the African fintech scene, He highlights the massive potential of open banking in Nigeria and Africa at large. As the continent continues to embrace technological advancements in the financial sector, he is very optimistic that the horizon looks promising for innovators, entrepreneurs, and end-users alike.

What does open banking mean to you, and can you differentiate between open banking and open finance?

To simplify this similar but different concept, Open banking specifically focuses on  banks sharing customer data with third-party developers through APIs, with customer consent, enabling new financial products and services. It represents a move towards a more collaborative and transparent financial ecosystem, but I would describe open finance encompassing a wider range of financial data beyond just banking, such as insurance, investments, and pensions. It aims for a holistic approach to financial data sharing, giving consumers a comprehensive view of their financial situation. To summarize it open banking focuses on bank data, while open finance encompasses a broader spectrum of financial data.

Okay, so why do you think open banking is relevant for Nigeria?

Open banking houses diverse opportunities for the financial system in Nigeria. It can promote financial inclusion, innovation, and competition. Open banking is also instrumental for business performance as it can cost transaction costs and improve access to critical financial services such as loans and investments. Lastly, open banking has been responsible for creating transformative financial products and services across the world. An example is the unprecedented 68% annual growth in Indonesia’s Permata Bank due to the integration of open banking technologies. It is important to promote the integration of open banking in the Nigerian financial sector as PWC, Microsoft, Accenture and other globally leading organizations believe that it is the future of banking and fintech.

Well, as an experienced software engineer, what role do you think people like you have to play in open banking?

Every FinTech innovation is powered by software. As such, software engineers are critical and irreplaceable in building robust platforms, ensuring data security, and optimizing user experiences for open banking and fintech at large. The works of fellow software engineers and mine are enabling the continent to expand into new financial technology opportunities and solutions including open banking.

I like how you mentioned your works. Can you give us one or two examples of what you have done?

Oh, many but I can recount one. Worked with a pioneer fintech organization, to deliver the software service powering a huge number of financial transactions carried out daily in Nigeria, I also consult for startups, helping set up their technology stack ensuring technology is streamlined to the business problem.

That is great. About open banking, what roles do you think the Nigerian government has to play?

A lot but thankfully, Nigeria has started by taking the lead in Africa with the right steps. Regulatory bodies have started aligning with expert in financial technology to create desired roadmap to properly implement this ingenious initiative, I am very confident that this would lead to multiple union startup as new opportunity arise and value added service are being created, opportunity lies in each decentralized value chain, studying the result of these initiative in other economies like the United Kingdom, a very conservative estimate of a 10 billion dollars market awaits Nigeria and the Africa economy as a whole, It’s safe to call it an untapped goldmine in consumers data.

Thank you for that. To round off, can you briefly say few benefits of open banking that we should look forward to in Nigeria?

There is a lot of benefits to expect. For instances, consumers will experience increased choice and convenience in services, products and their use. Consumers will also enjoy lower costs of banking services and also have higher access to services such as loans, investment and cross-border transactions. On the other hand, businesses will experience increased efficiency due to improved financial and payment processes automation, security and reliability. They will also gain new revenue opportunities through partnerships with fintech new investment opportunities, and improved old and new market access.

Well, we hope to see all of that. What roles do you hope to play in all these?

I constantly ask myself this question too, I am a big proponent of innovation and financial technology, I hope to continue my innovative engineering contributions even at a greater scale, build more optimized services and products and mentor and scale up with startups in solving technical and critical problems and most importantly shape the future of financial technology.