00:00Yeah, thank you for joining us. So here we are in our Fireside chat, about as far away from a
00:06Fireside as you could possibly imagine. We should have had some flames or something on in the
00:11background, but one of the things that we're only going to keep this short, it's going to be,
00:17like I say, just kind of a good one-on-one chat. One of the themes that we've seen over the day
00:24is this idea of financial inclusion. It's about access to capital, it's about access to
00:31the financial institutions that kind of keep this running. You, obviously, are with MasterCard,
00:37one of the biggest global financial institutions that exist. But I guess one of the first questions
00:44really is, how do you make sure that that financial inclusion, that the big institutions
00:53can access it, but also the people on the ground, the people who, Obi mentioned the markets,
00:58like, what does MasterCard put in place that includes people?
01:04Thank you very much for that question. I think the very first thing is, you take a look at
01:12Africa today, and you obviously will realize that we've got the right technology that is
01:21coming in, we've got the population, however, not everybody is financially included today.
01:27Yeah.
01:28And the first thing we have to think about significantly is access. How do we get everybody
01:35to have access to the financial sector? Whether that is via a bank account, whether that is
01:42via a wallet, the first thing is we've got to bring people into the financial sector.
01:48Now, further to that, you then realize it's not just about having access alone. What do you
01:57then do with the access? Sure.
01:59They have needs today, and, you know, the various conversations we've had this evening
02:04has focused a lot on a number of the needs that many of these consumers have. What we then
02:13need to do is to collaborate, to make sure that we're innovating, but innovating in a very
02:20relevant manner.
02:21Right.
02:22Not that we're just importing technology and throwing it out there at people, but we're
02:27looking at what are the pain points, what are the peculiar challenges in Africa that we've
02:33got today, in this market, or in specific sectors of the economy.
02:37Sure.
02:38Collaborating with local entities that have got the right market insights, that have got
02:43that level of solution, and then partnering with the global institutions like Mastercard
02:50to deliver the right solutions. The next thing we then need to think about is also the entrepreneurs.
02:58The entrepreneurs are the backbone of the African economy. Now, we need to make sure, because
03:05in a place like Nigeria, almost 90% of businesses are entrepreneurs.
03:10Yeah.
03:11To really get to the last mile, we talked about the artists, we talked about the people in
03:15the creatives, but we've also mentioned in the course of this evening, we talked about
03:21open markets that have no online representation.
03:24Yeah.
03:25It's more or less a grey market, and so what you want to do is to make sure that you provide
03:31solutions that allow this set of people, or this demography, to receive payments. That's
03:39the only way you can leverage the access, you can leverage the innovations, in order to
03:46make sure that we have a complete ecosystem that delivers the right solutions for everybody.
03:52Sure. And what have been the challenges that is stopping this now? And what are Mastercard
03:58doing to kind of overcome these?
04:00Okay, some of the challenges we're currently facing right now is, if you take a look at
04:05the African landscape, one of the things you will realize is connectivity. Right now, we've got internet
04:15penetration at about 38% across Africa at the end of 2024. Even though we're growing faster, or twice the rest of the world, at less than 40%, that is still a challenge. Yeah. Now we need that level of digital infrastructure to be in place. So broadband penetration, mobile connectivity, those are things that we need to put in place in order to make sure that people can have
04:44easy access to their accounts, to their wallets, and not only that they can use it to connect to the global ecosystem. The second thing is, power obviously is an issue. Yeah. Maybe not in this room, but if you go out there. Well, you weren't here earlier. But if you go out there, you find out that someone probably from my village probably has power probably about six hours of the day. What does it do with the
05:14many 18 hours? Does it mean they're totally cut off from the rest of the world? So we've got a couple of basics that we would need to improve on. And ultimately, it's about helping these people to then see the value. One of the things we've done really well in Nigeria is USSD banking.
05:32Very basic thing, but provides significant access to financial transactions for many of our people. That has scaled really well. It's probably one of the fastest growing channels within this country today. What are those other solutions we can get in order to bring more people into that ecosystem?
05:56Sure. And what is your ideal scenario over the next 10 years, over the next 20 years and longer? What are the things that need to be in place today that can ensure financial inclusion? You talked about access, but on the ground, how does that happen? What are the practicalities behind it?
06:20All right. So in very practical terms, I think the first thing is we need to work with everyone. Financial inclusion is an ecosystem play. We need to collaborate. So both from the government perspective, both from the private sector, the public sector, everyone is going to have to be involved.
06:39And so the first thing we need to do is to make sure that we provide the right level of partnerships and collaboration. This is not something that any one person can do by themselves.
06:52Sure. And so at MasterCard, what we've done is to provide a framework that allows us to be able to collaborate and partner with many of our local fintechs for small businesses for different solutions. Examples will be today, many of our merchants cannot afford to have a $200, $300 terminal, right?
07:19Yeah. But what we've done is to off the backdrop of the fact that practically every one of them probably has a phone.
07:26Yeah. So can we create a solution that leverages what they already have? And we've created a solution called Tap on Phone, where your phone basically becomes a contact-like device that I can use to pay you when you provide goods or services to me.
07:42So these are the reality of what we need to do in order to make sure that everybody in the market, you know, then comes into these financial brackets.
07:52Yeah. I think one of the interesting things about that we see that we spoke earlier in a panel about this idea of leapfrogging technologies.
08:01So the innovations and technologies that are happening in Africa are forced because of the situation on the ground and the realities and questions of infrastructure.
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