Lets Change The System
Africa has seen great progress in banking, especially in mobile payments. However, it still relies largely on face-to-face meetings, existing personal relationships and multiple layers of bureaucracy. This outdated system is hampering the massive strides being made across the continent in education, technology and trade.
Its cost and efficiencies are felt by many across the continent. Even the ‘best’ service is cumbersome and expensive. Transactions take too long, rates are unfavourable for consumers and currencies fluctuate dramatically. There is little integration with mobile banking and ‘digital’ banking stretches only as far as websites that are barely fit for purpose.
Customers are, rightly, disaffected by a system that is not always transparent and promotes pay-day loans. Members of the diaspora who wish to send money to relatives in Africa encounter high costs and an unwieldy system. Receiving funds is even more difficult.
So many people seek better value by simply going outside formal banking channels to send and receive money.
Simply speaking, the current situation is crying out for change. So lets change it!
The Size of the Opportunity
African banking is growing at the second fastest rate in the world. McKinsey predicts that by 2022, 450 million Africans will use banking services. That is half the adult population, creating revenues of $129 billion (of which $53bn will be in retail banking). Namiri will accelerate this process by developing a seamless digital platform.
Back in 2017, 40% of Africans expressed a preference for digital banking even though many had no access to it at all. The ground-breaking Africa Continental Free Trade Area has created the biggest, most innovative trade deal on earth, and has made an Africa-wide banking app possible.
Either the continent waits for banks to adopt their own proprietorial, digital system, or a telco/ fintech company takes the initiatives and takes the lead with cutting-edge technology and outstanding levels of service.
How Namiri Will Disrupt the System
- Real-time banking via a smartphone app.
- Allowing customers to open accounts in minutes, without the need for a personal visit to a bank.
- An instant improvement in the customer’s ability to manage their money through analytics and AI.
- Providing access to free and objective wealth management advice.
- Providing outstanding levels of customer service and customer experience – the customer comes first.
- The savings made by a bank without a branch network can be passed directly to users.
- Namiri will be available from anywhere in the world. With regulatory advice, the diaspora based in other countries or even international customers can open accounts.
For African People Namiri will be:
- The first banking app created by Africans for Africans. It will understand and adapt to the nuances of African behaviour rather than being bought ‘off the shelf’ from the developed world.
- Reassuring, convenient, safe and empowering (fully regulated and protected).
- An easier, smoother, more transparent way to manage money.
- Easy-to-use, anywhere and at any time.
- A single place for all of a user’s business finances.
- Somewhere to send and receive money instantly, whether the user is shopping or trading.
- The cheapest way to bank on the continent.
- Liberating, exciting and game-changing, creating hope and opportunity for the African people.
For the African Continent Namiri will be:
- A conduit to Africans working and living on an equal playing field with the rest of the world.
- A springboard from which African business can flourish.
- A way to drive tax revenues back into the system by redirecting black-market activities back into the economy.
- A massive opportunity to provide financial services to the mass market (even in remote areas).
- A driver for positive social impact, using crowd funding techniques to fund local causes e.g. fund schools, nutrition and medical facilities.
Contact us to learn more about what Namiri and our digital bank for Africa will do for the continent.
Why Rwanda?
We are not importing an off the shelf product and adapting it for Africans. We will create a new and better digital service, built by Africans for Africans.
Namiri is a forward-thinking, young bank, so where better to start, than in a forward-thinking, young country like Rwanda.
Namiri needs to find its feet in a country run by a stable government with low levels of corruption. Not only is Rwanda a place where technological innovation is booming, but the majority of the population speak English, French and Swahili.
Volkswagen has shown how quickly Rwandans can adapt to new technology and opportunities with the development of its community car-sharing service. While the Mara Group have announced Africa’s “first high-tech smartphone factory” in Rwanda.
Rwanda has all of the elements to create instant lift-off for Namiri, and will ensure the development and growth of Namiri is smooth and seamless.
Please get in touch to find out more about Rwanda, Namiri and our digital bank for Africa.