Category: Writings

Was a part of the first edition of Open Future World’s Global Progress report and I wrote about open banking in Nigeria – progress made so far, data privacy, as well as the impact on fintechs, challenger banks, and the general populace.

An interview with Lateral Frontiers VC about open banking in Nigeria.

Open banking in Nigeria is taking off on an organic level, unlike in the UK where it was done under compulsion.

The UK leads the world in open banking. In 2020, API call volumes in the UK increased to 5.8billion, as opposed to the 66.8million in 2018. According to Mastercard, in the early half of 2021, over 3 million UK consumers and businesses used open banking-enabled products to manage their finances, access credit and make payments.

Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) allows smaller banks and neobanks to focus on their business of providing financial services without having to build or maintain very expensive banking infrastructure. BaaS, API banking, and open banking share some similarities, and many providers offer them as a package, but these models have differences. Read the rest on Medium: https://jemimabenson.medium.com/understand-banking-as-a-service-ca9eedda381d

With the absence of existing open APIs, or even reasonable API banking from most banks, there has been an emergence of smart banking API providers like Mono and Okra (in Nigeria), Stitch in South Africa, Plaid in the US, and Tink in Europe. They provide simple APIs which anyone can use within minutes and at […]

There is a lot of confusion about what open banking is, especially when it comes to banks making APIs available to fintechs and others. Many seem to think that API banking is the same as open banking; it’s easy to get both confused, after all, they are both about APIs and banking. Read the rest […]