Author: ITPulse

By Greta Skridailaitė Super apps, fast and goal-oriented development and simplified barriers for new market players are on the horizon for the Banking and Fintech sectors. Growing competition and rising customer expectations are pushing Banking and Fintech markets towards introducing interdisciplinary functionalities and focusing on fast and efficient internal operations, leading them to become more digitized in the overall process. Additionally, the growing interest in digital banking could ease market-entry for new challenger banks. Anton Zujev, Head of Business Development at Fininbox, has elaborated on these three trends in Banking and Fintech sectors that will disrupt the industry in the near…

Pan-African bank, Ecobank Nigeria has asked unbanked and underbanked Nigerians which include artisans such as mechanics, carpenters, electricians, small scale retailers, transporters and others who depend on daily earning for survival, to leverage its *326# instant account opening platform. The bank believes the instant account opening platform will enable the unbanked and underbanked Nigerians to save easily and access microloans (Xpress Loan), explaining that the platform will also enable them easily receive monetary support from friends and family members as the need arises, especially during the period of the COVID-19 lockdown, while maintaining social distancing via digital transactions, in a…

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has unveiled what it described as 2020 Global ICT Regulatory Outlook, a Fifth Generation Collaborative Regulation, which will help policy-makers and regulators to leverage digital transformation for all through stronger collaboration across sectors. The tool, ITU noted is a response to Information and communication technology (ICT) becoming more prevalent, embedded in many sectors and systems beyond the ICT sector itself. According to Houlin Zhao, ITU Secretary-General, the tool, which will aid collaboration across sectors, has proved increasingly successful in piloting regulators and policy-makers towards broad and inclusive digital transformation. “Indeed, digital technologies and services are…

Despite the argument generated from the Coronavirus and Fifth Generation Technology, which referred to as 5G, a report by FinFold has predicted that global 5G connections in the next five years will be 2.7 billion. This increase in connections will result in a growth of at least 20 times from this year’s 120 million connections. The data in the report show that 5G connections will continually experience upward growth. By next year, the connections will grow by 180 percent to stand at 340 million. By 2022, the connections will be 810 million and later grow by 72.8 percent to hit…

By Stefan Nalletamby African Development Bank has raised an exceptional $3 billion, three-year bond to help alleviate the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a devastating impact globally, the African continent, while less affected, is preparing to undergo its own severe social and economic crisis. As of April 7, over 10,000 cases have been reported across 52 countries in Africa (less than 1% of cases globally). Yet despite the slow onset, Africa’s fragile health systems will be overwhelmed if the virus continues to spread. To avoid this scenario, governments are implementing…

Pan-African ICT company, CWG Plc has rejigged its bills presentment, aggregation and payment platform, BillsnPay as part of an effort to address some of the teething challenges of Small, Medium Enterprises in Nigeria.    According to CWG, the challenges this solution will address among the SMEs are the lack of data for business insight, late and nonpayment of bills by their customers and high cost of operation and maintenance.    Others include late delivery of bills to their customers and delay in the reconciliation of payments made against the Bill. These challenges, CWG argues have impacted negatively on the revenues…

With route optimization software you’ll spend much less time planning – and the routes produced will be far superior to manually created routes. For a mobile workforce, route optimization is the process of determining the most efficient routes, in terms of cost, resources and time. All other relevant factors such as order and driver restrictions, as well as the various workflows of a particular business are also factored in. The aim is to maximize efficiency and fulfil more orders: getting to more addresses with fewer resources. This allows businesses to save time, costs and ultimately increase their revenue. With route…

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) innovator and entrepreneurs in Nigeria are set to receive supports that will turn their ideas into products and prototypes. The support will be coming from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), who has embarked on the building of six Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Parks to promote the socio-economic transformation of Nigeria. In a statement signed by the Director of Public Affairs at NCC, Dr. Henry Nkemadu, the ICT Parks are to provide Innovation Labs and Digital Fabrication Laboratories (Fablabs) for use by technopreneurs. Nigeria’s independent telecoms regulatory authority believes the Parks will provide a Commercial…

Nemo, a Warri based mobile app development firm has developed a local application that identifies and displays the distance between a user location and a COVID-19 affected area. The App tagged Covid2geda, which was developed as part of the firm’s efforts to support the Nigerian government in tackling the menace of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is presently ravaging the world, also gives a constant update of how many people that have been affected by the virus, figures of those who have died as a result of the Virus and those who have recovered from the Virus. “Apart from giving Nigerian…

By Hashim Suleiman Let me start this piece with borrowed words from His Excellency Kashim Shettima, former Governor of Borno State who posited that “when you give power to a dull person, he gets chased by his shadows and sees everyone as his enemy”. These are the kinds of situations that weaken institutions in our climes and we are struggling to see a functional lot of them. When weak and dull people assume a position, two things come into play, one is getting drunk over it and the second is not understanding the reality of its transience and so rather…