Being deliberate about creating a “greater purpose” is essential to building an authentic corporate culture, engaging stakeholders, and navigating the evolving landscape of corporate philanthropy. This is the philosophy behind Africa’s largest digital payments network, Onafriq’s, extensive growth and vision to unify the continent’s digital payments landscape according to its General Counsel and Chief Risk Officer Funmi Dele-Giwa.

Dele-Giwa recently shared insights into the organisation’s unique position at the intersection of social impact and commercial ambition at the Women in Payments Symposium EMEA, held in London. During her speech she delved into the company’s journey in delivering greater financial access and connecting all of Africa into a single integrated network that empowers both individuals and businesses.

“The purpose of Onafriq from the very onset was one of providing financial access to marginalised individuals on the African continent and having a positive impact in the countries we operate in and the clients we serve,” she said. “That is why Onafriq was built on the back of a strong belief that mobile money would serve as a strong enabler of financial access to millions of under- or unserved Africans.”

Established nearly 15 years ago with the mantra of “making borders matter less”, the company aims to facilitate cross-border payment services within Africa – as well as in and out of Africa. This is underpinned by the vision of its Founder and CEO Dare Okoudjou, that making a payment anywhere in the world, to anywhere across the globe should be as easy and as painless as it is to make a phone call.

Today, Onafriq’s payments network connects more than 1,300 cross-border payment corridors providing access to more than 500 million mobile wallets and 200 million bank accounts across 40 African markets. This vast digital infrastructure is a testament to its position as the “network of networks”, enabling services like cross-border payments, remittances, card issuing, agency banking and more, which facilitate seamless money flow from, to, and across the continent.

During her talk at the symposium, Dele-Giwa noted that remittance services were a key example of this marriage of concepts, having particularly emerged as a powerful tool for boosting economic growth and financial empowerment. By partnering with international remittance companies, the Onafriq network enables the significant pool of migrant workers from Africa in the diaspora to send and receive money efficiently and affordably. She notes however, that remittances are not just the privy of the global north to south, as there is significant intra-Africa remittance demand which has traditionally remained unmet. Through partnerships with mobile network operators (MNOs) across the Continent, Onafriq is bridging gaps between countries like Kenya and Uganda, as well as Cameroon and Nigeria, by digitising and facilitating intra-Africa remittance flows.

“Strategic collaborations between key sectors of Africa’s financial services landscape are key to unlocking the full potential of remittances as a catalyst for economic growth and development,”  said Dele-Giwa. “As such, fostering robust partnerships between payment networks and mobile money platforms is important to enabling greater remittance flows given the widespread adoption of mobile wallets across the continent.”

Another way that Onafriq is blending the principles of social betterment with business objectives is by empowering small businesses in Africa to flourish and grow by enabling access to a wider range of choices in disbursing or collecting digital payments over cash. Onafriq’s partnership with One Acre Fund is an example of how the company’s network has contributed to providing small-scale farmers with asset-based financing services.

“Our work to open up markets and connect people to opportunities continues to empower the African gig economy, enabling GDOs to deliver cash assistance to needy communities and international merchants to pay local creators, influencers and artists, as well as helping small traders to sell their goods across borders, by simplifying the ways they can pay and can get paid,” said Dele-Giwa.

Another notable aspect of Onafriq’s journey of positive social impact, according to Dele-Giwa, is its commitment to empowering women. Through its agent network in Nigeria, women entrepreneurs are able to generate additional income by becoming agents, and by using the Baxi point of sale device they can easily manage payments for their shops and market stalls. Furthermore, partnerships with organisations like the One Acre Fund helped to empower women in small-scale farming, amplifying their economic participation.

For those seeking to emulate Onafriq’s success, Dele-Giwa noted that it was important to align their social mission with the innovation and collaboration needed to achieve a positive impact while pursuing commercial success.

“Let’s remember, it’s not just about the services we offer. It’s about the impact we make while doing so,” she said. “It’s important to share those impactful stories of empowerment and positive change delivered as a result of your products and services, but it is also important to create a set of impact metrics to measure success by. This way you are always able to hold yourself accountable to employees, shareholders, regulators, clients, and other stakeholders.”

Source: Finance Derivative

Faye Ellis, Principal Training Architect – AWS at Pluralsight

Generative AI has captured the imagination of many over the past year. However, aside from using ChatGPT to write our wedding speeches and do our kid’s homework, there are many ways to maximise the technology to add real business value and a competitive edge.

Getting the right skills in place for employees is also key for businesses. Whether employees are total beginners to AI or looking to move into advance uses, investment in the technology will only bring true business benefits if people are empowered to work with it effectively, try new applications, and do so securely.

Here are four examples of where AI, when used well, can bring real business value:

Build your own chatbots

Conversational chatbots and virtual assistants can increase customer engagement in an interactive and personalised way. They can be tailored to reflect brand voice, and be delivered in a consistent way across a site so customers always have access to timely support.

Amazon Lex, for example, makes it easy to build high-quality conversational interfaces powered by generative AI. 

Automate your repetitive business processes

Generative AI is ideal for automating repetitive tasks that don’t require high levels of creativity, such as reviewing and summarising contracts, generating project collateral, and code documentation. FAQ engines that handle common customer support and HR inquiries are expected to become commonplace. Marketing teams that need to develop campaigns in a similar style to previously successful campaigns, or automate customer outreach, will also find that they can easily automate these repetitive tasks with generative AI. 

Content marketers can use services like Bedrock to build a social media campaign for a new product or service. Marketers provide relevant data and prompts, and Bedrock generates copy and images for targeted social media posts. 

Incorporate generative AI into your cybersecurity

Generative AI can be used in risk modelling and assessing and interpreting the risk of cybersecurity incidents and findings.

Use generative adversarial networks (GANs) to create synthetic data, enabling security experts to anticipate what might happen during a cyber attack

Generate image, video, and text

Most of us are familiar with image, video, and text generation—the primary capabilities of generative AI. Use cases include creating original content, images, and summarising text.

Leading pre-trained AI models are available through SageMaker and Bedrock to help you get started quickly. Use Bedrock Chat Playground to experiment with various models using a chat interface.  

Getting your teams up to speed with AI

To start using these technologies, you need your staff to be skilled in using them.

Organisations might be accelerating AI adoption, but employees need the right skills – otherwise organisations risk facing an AI literacy gap. In fact, our recent research found that 80% of executives currently neglect employee training, and 20% don’t have an understanding of their teams’ AI skills.

By focusing on training the existing talent pool, it’s possible to propel them through the next wave of AI innovation, and fill talent gaps from within.

Source: Finance Derivative

Following the global economic upheaval brought on by the pandemic, businesses are once again prioritising growth on a global scale. While every business recognises the importance of expansion, their methods, obstacles, and risks differ greatly.

In the following article, Sonya Geelon, Chief Commercial Officer at Conferma, explores some of the most common challenges holding businesses back, and how by including innovative payments solutions in your payment strategy, you can successfully position your business to expand into global markets.

Barriers to global expansion

At Conferma, we wanted to know what businesses felt stood between them and their growth ambitions, so we spoke to 400 financial decision makers to find out.

The research, shared in our new Growth Ignition Index report, identified global expansion as a key priority for businesses looking to grow across all regions. Significant drivers included increasing customer demand (46 per cent), maintaining a consistent cashflow (36 per cent) and undertaking digital transformation (34 per cent.) Businesses also highlighted a number of barriers, such as identifying valuable markets to expand into (27 per cent) and navigating complex cross-border payment systems (13 per cent.) The following sheds light on some of the factors that businesses perceive to be hindering their growth.

Operational inefficiencies

It’s a well-known fact that operational efficiency is crucial for giving businesses the competitive edge. If your processes run smoothly and effectively, you’re likely in a good position to grow. However, a third (33 per cent) of businesses identified operational inefficiencies as a significant sticking point, particularly among small-and-medium sized organisations. This perhaps indicates that larger companies have already invested in boosting efficiency to a degree, however, the issue was noted across businesses of all sizes.

Complex cross-border payments

Successful growth relies heavily on being able to make fast, seamless transactions, however, recent research from Rapyd found that 38 per cent of businesses experience delays of five days or more when sending or receiving international payments.[1] Costs and delays in cross-border transactions can have a significant impact on growth, cutting into revenues, restricting cash flow and complicating financial planning. Our own research highlighted this, with 14 per cent of businesses reporting slow and/or complex cross-border payments as a significant barrier to expansion.

So how can businesses overcome these challenges and unlock global growth?

Taking your payments strategy virtual

Amid the array of payment options available in the market, virtual cards have emerged as a versatile solution, valued by users globally. According to Juniper Research, the global value of virtual cards will increase over threefold in just 5 years, climbing from $1.9 trillion in 2021 to a staggering $6.8 trillion by 2026.[2]

So how do they work?

Virtual cards are essentially digital versions of traditional credit cards. The technology generates a 16-digit card  number, allowing an employee to make payments without having to physically hand over a card. Instead, they provide the virtual card number, expiration date, and security code, just like they would with a regular credit or debit card.

Virtual cards come with built-in fraud and security features, enabling restrictions on usage. For instance, users can set a specific date range or limit usage to certain merchants. This ensures that any attempts to exceed the set amount, use the card at unauthorised merchants, or spend beyond the specified date range will result in a declined transaction.

Using a virtual card provider allows access to extensive, pre-existing payments ecosystems. For example, Conferma connects 75+ card issuers and banks across the world. This enables businesses to use virtual cards in 62 different currencies, making international payments frictionless while mitigating costly cross-border fees. Virtual cards can also help boost cashflow and improve operational efficiency, automating reconciliation and cutting lengthy processing times. By removing convoluted payment processes, virtual cards give businesses the freedom to grow in the markets they deem most valuable, not just most accessible.

Of those surveyed, four out of five  respondents (82 per cent) plan on expanding their virtual card usage in the next twelve months, with 64 per cent extending usage to additional payment needs. Businesses already using virtual cards also anticipate a substantial increase in the volume of payments they make virtually, with our data projecting a rise from 45 to 57 per cent of all payments being made using virtual cards in the next 12 months.

Virtual cards offer a compelling solution to the challenges limiting international growth by offering enhanced security, streamlined operational processes, and seamless cross-border transactions. By embracing virtual cards as a strategic tool, organisations can unlock opportunities for growth and innovation, empowering them to navigate the complexities of international commerce with ease.

[1] The 2023 State of Cross-Border Payments, Rapyd, 2023.

[2] Virtual Cards: B2B and B2C Applications, Competitive Analysis & Market Forecasts 2021-2026, Juniper Research