Nigeria is now a USSD Nation
I saw numbers on Friday and can boldly write that Nigeria is now a USSD Nation. I made the call last year that fintechs should forget POS and move to something modern. USSD will leapfrog POS/plastic into the next phase of Nigerian financial sector. If you are in the business of POS in Nigeria, check how cheque printing companies are doing in Lagos: they are all dying off because writing cheque in Lagos is out of style. The next phase of USSD will be integration with WhatsApp and that will do it. With that no one will care about POS/plastic.
Uploaded files:USSD banking provides the architecture to build that future and our fintechs must explore business models that can make such work, for them, the citizens and the nation. I expect an amalgam of many bank USSD products in coming years: they become inter-operable, brand-agnostic and cost-efficient to unlock values in villages and communities.