The Co/founder and Chief Executive Officer, VerifyMe Nigeria, Esigie Aguele, has said digital identity will unlock opportunities for open finance in Africa.
Aguele, who was the keynote speaker at the 5th edition of the Africa Tech Summit held in Nairobi, Kenya, said open finance initiatives such as mobile payments were already making the difference for many of the 85 per cent of unbanked adults in Sub-saharan Africa. While speaking during the Decentralized Finance session of the summit, Aguele noted that “open finance, backed by a strong digital identity infrastructure, was key to bridging the gap between identification and financial inclusion to achieve results at scale for the over 500 million people living in Africa without a recognised form of ID.”
Aguele said, “In an increasingly interconnected world and with the rise in peer-to-peer transactions, facilitating openness, transparency and lower costs is key. Digital identity will be critical to drive this. Thankfully, open finance initiatives such as mobile payments are already making the difference for many of the 85 per cent of unbanked adults in Sub-saharan Africa. However, we need accelerated action to achieve results at scale.
“In Nigeria for instance, digital identity has the potential to unlock opportunities from open finance initiatives that will address the 16 million home mortgage shortfall as well as the insurance and auto-loan markets which are under-scaled at 0.3 to 0.5 penetration on maturity and have the potential to grow to $800-$1b industries.”