The Age of Fintechnolization as TotalEnergies Goes Fintech

In this piece, I argued that every digital platform will become a fintech company. I called it fintechnolization: “Looking at Chinese digital platforms (Tencent, Alibaba) and US counterparts (Google, Facebook), my conclusion is this: every platform will become a fintech company in the end.”

But do not just wait for digital platforms. Yes, every company can indeed be a fintech company: “To ensure the financial inclusion policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) becomes a success, TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria Plc, in conjunction with InTouch and other partners, has deployed “Touch Point” to over 385 stations.

Touch point is a mobile payment financial-inclusion solution which TotalEnergies offers to capture the banked and unbanked populations in rural, sub-urban and urban communities nationwide including Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano, and Kaduna.

In view of the growing need for the integration of banks and other financial institutions with innovators and customers in the financial services space and the increasing adoption of Application Programming Interface (“API”) based integrations in the industry, TotalEnergies has partnered with organizations  from different sectors of the economy to provide Touch Point, a robust financial solution that can be enjoyed in more than 385 stations nationwide with the plan to expand our footprint in the nearest future.

There are currently five service bouquets being offered at the stations – Airtime, Data, Bills Payment, Cash Deposit and Cash Withdrawal.”

People, the biggest innovation now in Africa is business model. Why? The technology stacks are becoming increasingly mundane that inventing new business models is where leverageable values could be found.

For TotalEnergies, it makes sense: core competency enshrined by the old Adam Smith division of labour was postulated during the industrial age era when factors of production were exceedingly expensive. Today, anyone can do anything and that is why Amazon is in pharmacy, logistics, retail, etc. Go further,  there is nothing Google’s parent company does not do including medical science. Have the foundation stack, and you can keep building on top of it.

This is the age of fintechnolization. My blog, a digital portal, has its own fintech: Tekedia Capital.

Fintechnolization of Platforms – Expect This Redesign in Startups

Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 10 - May 3, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.