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Open Technology Foundation (Open Banking Nigeria)

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Open Banking Nigeria is working together with stakeholders within the Nigerian financial industry to build the next generation of open API standard in order to reduce financial exclusion, drive innovation and choice for customers, businesses and banks. The natural progression of innovation within the global financial industry has seen the rise of the API economy, API driven integrations, and the demand of customers and fintechs to financial data and transactions. Just as various jurisdictions are driving Open API agenda, the need for Open Banking is very much apparent in Nigeria as well and is already happening with a few banks providing API gateways for Fintechs to connect to. Unfortunately, each bank is operating within a silo, and the innovations that could come out of the opening may be missed. Consequently, Nigeria needs a coordinated and open approach to implementing Open Banking. We have seen the history of collaborations produce fantastic results such as Interswitch ATM network, Cashless Nigeria, BVN, etc. The need for a community and non-partisan approach to driving an Open API standard led to the emergence of Open Technology Foundation, a non-profit, created by a group of banking and fintech veterans to promote the following key objectives:

  1. Advocacy with Nigerian banks, fintechs, regulators, and other stakeholders to understand and embrace the concept of Open Banking to reduce financial exclusion, improve customer convenience, increase innovation, and reduce time and cost of technical integration.
  2. Development of the common API standard with the associated open source intellectual properties that would enhance its adoption and sustainability, development of a sandbox, creation of a certification program, and recurrent trainings.