FinTech will play an important role in sustainability of the economic recovery – CBN

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said that as the economy recovers from COVID-19, FinTech will play a more important role towards resilient and sustainable recovery.

The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, disclosed this on Wednesday at a conference for financial correspondents and business editors in Enugu state.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in partnership with the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), is responsible for overseeing the payments system’s efficiency and effectiveness.

Emefiele noted that year 2007 marked a turning point in the country’s payments system terrain with the launch of the CBN’s Payment Systems Vision 2020 (PSV 2020), which identified series of recommendations to increase the resilience of the payment system infrastructure and work-streams to encourage the usage of electronic payment methods.

Since then, the country has continued to introduce initiatives that would help simplify payments and deepen financial inclusion.

Technology continues to change the face of the financial services industry. The advent of digital financial services, for example, has created faster, more efficient, and typically cheaper transactions compared to traditional financial services. As the global economy recovers from COVID-19, it is obvious that FinTech will play a more important role towards resilient and sustainable recovery,” he said.

Emefiele added, “Indeed, the spread of the virus at the time accelerated the speed of digitalization of many sectors of the economy. Expectedly, discussions have increased around the issue of the digital economy just as more opportunities have come up for financial institutions and other players within the payment ecosystem to innovate and provide more efficient options for payments and settlements.