Interswitch Group, Africa’s leading digital payments and commerce company today, formally recognized First Bank Nigeria Ltd. as the first financial institution in the country to achieve sustained transaction volumes of 100 million transactions, first in December 2015 and again in May 2016.
The record transaction volumes represent the total transactions processed by First Bank’s Front End Processor running on the Interswitch transaction-switching platform, which seamlessly links all financial institutions in Nigeria to facilitate better and quicker transactions across all platforms.
In December 2015, First bank was recognized as the first-ever financial institution in the country to achieve this feat. Being able to sustain this in May 2017 is a pointer toward the bank’s desire to promote the CBN cashless policy and boost economic growth via e-payments across Nigeria and the African continent.
In his remarks, Group Managing Director/CEO, Interswitch, Mitchell Elegbe commented
“It essentially reflects the strength and development of electronic transactions in Nigeria that a single banking partner can record 100 million transactions in a single month. When this figure is aggregated with that of our other partners, then you can begin to have an idea of the sheer size and demand for electronic financial services in Nigeria. Interswitch is excited by this sustained achievement by FirstBank and we look forward to partnering with the Bank to further consolidate the gains of digital transaction innovation.”
Also speaking, the MD/CEO of FirstBank, Dr. Adesola Adeduntan, noted that the bank will continue to employ novel approaches in providing secure and convenient banking services to its customers and promised to drive innovation and extend its leadership of the financial sector services with specialised and technology-driven products and services. In his words,
“First Bank’s investment in e-business reflects our commitment to promoting financial inclusion which is widely regarded as a lever for sustainable economic growth and development as well as enhancing entrepreneurship. Our passion to serve and extend financial services to the unbanked has since inspired several innovations and we thank our esteemed customers for their continued patronage and trust in our services whilst dedicating the recognition to them”.
It is on record that FirstBank was one of the foundational shareholders of Interswitch, prior to the company’s acquisition by a tripartite consortium led by Helios Investment Partners, and including the IFC and Adlevo Capital.
The milestone by First Bank is another marker of the scale of success recorded by Interswitch since its launch in 2002. It will be recalled that the company in 2014 was listed by Deloitte as the fastest growing tech company in Africa with a year-on-year growth rate of over 1500%.
