Nigeria: The Long Path to Nigerian Payments Innovation

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to get a haircut in Lagos. After I finished, I realised that I had no cash with me, I only had cards and my barber Chika did not have a POS machine. He suggested that I try GTBank's *737# USSD payments channel. I had never used it before and had no choice but to try it. The barber and my friend Kola who had accompanied me assured me that it was easy to use and it made more sense than driving to an ATM and back.

I tried it, and they were right. In less than 10 minutes, I had on-boarded myself and Chika had money paid into his Fidelity Bank account. The entire transaction happened in less than 5 minutes. The only time wasted waiting was for my barber to get the SMS confirmation that the money was already in his account. I almost lost my mind thinking about what had just happened, but the gentlemen beside me could not understand why. I had worked so hard for people to achieve this thing that now seemed mundane.

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