Author: ITPulse

One of Nigeria’s biggest financial institutions, Fidelity Bank has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Open Technology Foundation (OTF) for the adoption of a standard Application Programming Interface (API) for its operations as a financial institution. The deal, Fidelity said is consistent with its commitment to the adoption of innovative digital technology to drive its retail strategy, reduce costs and improve revenue and returns. “Through this partnership, Fidelity Bank would deepen its financial service delivery through appropriate and time sensitive channels whilst collaborating with other stakeholders within the ecosystem,” said Fidelity Bank CEO, Nnamdi Okonkwo. The statement described open Banking…

The Chief Executive Officer of Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC, Mr. Yinka Sanni has highlighted some of the ways the financial institution promotes healthy living and wellness among staff of the bank. Mr. Sanni gave the highlights at this year’s edition of the Stanbic IBTC Employee Health and Wellness week with the theme: “Healthy Mind, Healthy Body – Reloaded.” While encouraging the company’s employees to pay more attention to their mental health, to be more mindful about their lifestyle and to inculcate healthy habits, Sanni noted that the Health and Wellness Week is part of the bank’s contribution towards promoting wellness and healthy…

By Martin Ekpeke The latest figures released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) as of May 2019 show that, Nigeria presently has 63,244,609 broadband subscribers, representing 33.13 percent penetration. This figure puts side by side the population of 201,102,939 people living in the country, according to World Population Review is poor. What this means is that 137, 858, 609 Nigerians are without broadband connectivity in today’s world, where people can easily interact with an Automated Teller Machine (ATM), carry out activities around e-commerce, e-government, tele-medicine among others on a daily basis. Why some stakeholders have commended the figure, saying it…

Abuja, Nigeria’s Capital Territory is set to host over 54-member nations of the African Union (AU) Conference of African Telecommunications Regulators on Consumer Affairs, CATCO 2019, with the theme: Empowering the Telecom Consumer in an Era of Technological Evolution. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), disclosed this in a statement last night, saying the fulcrum of the 3-day Conference is to find a way of how regulatory activities of the African continent can be integrated for seamless connectivity to boost customer satisfaction. The conference is slated for August 20 – 22, 2019. ”This year’s event is geared towards pursuing a continuous…

Facebook has expanded its local language coverage in Africa, as part of its Third-Party Fact-Checking Programme, which it uses to raise potentially false stories to fact-checkers for review Social media giant launched the local language support for several African languages in 2018 to assess the accuracy of news on Facebook and aims to reduce the spread of misinformation. It relies on feedback from the Facebook community. It was launched across five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroon. This time, it has partnered with Africa Check, Africa’s first independent fact-checking organisation, to expand its local…

A new report from the GSMA has noted that, while 5G is inevitable, given that it is a natural progression from previous technology generations, it is not imminent in most markets in the Sub-Saharan Africa region as existing technologies are capable of supporting current use cases and demand for mobile internet connectivity. The report argues that for all countries in the region, market readiness is necessary to determine the timing for the transition to 5G and will help maximise value from 5G services for consumers, operators and the wider society. The report, which establishes the outlook and expectations for the…

– Rides On Global Partnership With Discover Network Cardholders will now have the ability to use their Verve Global Cards on the Discover Global Network, which provides acceptance in more than 190 countries and territories and will ultimately, expand Verve’s existing suite of tailored payment products and solutions for its customers. This was announced today by Verve, a leading payments technology and card business in Africa, and Discover Global Network, the payments brand of Discover. The first transaction occurred today at Swarovski in New York City. Senior executives from First Bank, Access Bank and Fidelity Bank purchased various items from…

The Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN) will next week at the Intercontinental Hotel, Balaclava, Mauritius join global content providers and other Internet Exchange Points in Africa at this year’s Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum. The Chief Executive Officer of IXPN, Mr. Rudman Mohammed disclosed this today in a chat with ITPulse in Lagos. He said IXPN is participating in the annual event, which serves as a platform to expand and develop the Internet in Africa to network with global content providers and IXPs in an effort to attract them to Nigeria, and ultimately, improve network interconnection, lower the cost…

To minimize the likelihood of a data breach, companies should hire dedicated cybersecurity specialists, make sure their data is well encrypted and segmented, and only provide limited access to it. Arecent study by IBM indicated that in 2019, on average, a single data breach costs $3.92 million for the affected company. The growing number of cybercrime occurrences of this sort is forcing organizations to rethink their security efforts to ensure their data is well protected. According to a network infrastructure industry insider Vincentas Grinius, the increasing number of data breaches can be partly curtailed if companies would hire cybersecurity specialists…

The organizer of the Better Life Billionaire Promo (or “BLB Promo”), a novel initiative of NNB Capital & Investments Limited, a financial and investment advisory firm, has assured Nigerians that the maiden edition of the promo is set to change many lives in the country. Speaking to Journalists in Lagos, the Director of the Campaign, Mr. Celestine Achi, noted that the BLB Promo is not only novel in its idea, butalso its prizes are unprecedented as participants stand the chance of being one of 10 people to win N5 million each, every week or the lucky winner of the N200…