Over 9 000 business leaders, decision makers and topic experts, 600 speakers as well as 100 fin-techs will converge in London beginning on September 23 to 26 for Sibos, the world’s premier financial services showcase.
Blue Code Africa, who are developing the future of mobile payment in Africa and Europe, will be exhibiting at the Africa Pavilion together with Bankserv and other leading financial players.
Delegates will be educated on how the world will pay, not just in the future, but right now – in a way that is secure, practical and does not need expensive technology and infrastructure to work.
Sibos 2019 focuses on “thriving in a hyper-connected world”, a theme which has profound implications for a continent which both leads the world in mobile money, but also wrestles with ongoing challenges in terms of access to smartphone technology and data.
African financial institutions, which have nurtured clients and developed products suited to local conditions over decades, now face the prospect of disintermediation by fintech and Bigtech who’s interests are aligned with foreign shareholders, not local financial markets and financial institutions.
Murray Gardiner, the director of Blue Code Africa, said many companies were harvesting and mining transactional data and disintermediation of the customer from the bank.
“African nations have invested 60+ years developing local financial markets to support local economic development. Banks need to get ahead of this trend.
“The disruption could undermine the delivery of more diverse financial services to MSMEs for artisans, farmers and traders that are the engine for wealth creation and jobs.
“A mobile merchant acquiring and payment scheme coupled with instant payments can provide a way for banks and other FIs to defend against disintermediation, protect their data and promote the development of a wider, divers and more accessible services for their consumers and in particular MSMEs. This is precisely what Bluecode supports,” he said.
A Bluecode payment is made mobile handset-to-handset, handset-to-POS or ECR, or any other standard mobile static or dynamic medium, push or pull, including e-commerce and USSD – All with no plastic or card scheme in sight.
The Bluecode platform will among other things promote financial-sector development with an efficient transaction payment that will increase consumer confidence in electronic payments as an alternative to cash.
It also facilitates a more equitable distribution of financial services for urban, peri-urban and rural business and consumers.