Payments Forum Nigeria (PAFON), the cross-industry platform focused on addressing issues that require broad cooperation and coordination across many constituents in the payments industry, has attracted sponsorships from Digital Encode Limited, Cybervergent and Payble.
Financial industry experts are warming up for the first edition of PAFON, scheduled to take place at Oriental Hotel, Lekki Road, Lagos on Thursday March 21, 2024, by 9am.
The Forum aims at providing an inside-look at the industry, offering perspectives from key stakeholders, including payment networks, technology innovators, leading merchants, issuers, acquirers and payment processors.
Throughout the years, the finance world has shifted into something much more than just banking and big corporations.
Speaking ahead of PAFON 1.0, with the theme, “Payments: Trust, Security and Privacy in AI Era”, the Chief Visionary Officer [CVO], Digital Encode Limited, Dr. Adewale Peter Obadare, noted that customers want to be assured that their sensitive information, such as credit card numbers and personal details, is treated with utmost care hence security has become paramount in the payments industry.
“Secure payment processing ensures that data breaches are minimized, instilling confidence in customers to keep coming back. Nigerian financial institutions reported ₦159 billion ($201.5 million) lost to fraud cases since 2020, according to the Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC). This is what the experts must tackle and customer awareness is key too”, he said.
Based on a report by Gartner, by 2024, 40% of privacy compliance technology will rely on AI, up from 5% in 2019, and by 2025, 60% of large organizations will use at least one privacy-enhancing computation technique in analytics, business intelligence, or cloud computing, and financial services industry is no exempted.
Also speaking, the Co-founder of Payble, Roosevelt Elias described PAFON as a ‘must-attend’ Forum because ‘issues listed to be discussed are germane and require critical attention. For instance, building financial inclusive products requires a mix of technology and illiteracy. The industry can’t achieve this by working in silos; we just have to unite to achieve the set target on financial inclusion, particularly for the rural dwellers.
Digital Encode is a leading consulting and integration firm that specialises in the design, management, and security of business-critical architecture; Cybervergent, is dedicated to helping protect business sensitive data from cyber-attacks, including customer information, financial records and intellectual property; Payble is a fintech startup that modernises local government payments such as creating citizen-centric payment experiences, delivering flexible billing and simplified rate collection. They will be joined at PAFON 1.0 by Inlaks, an IT company that offers core banking, fraud management, cybersecurity, cloud, data center, enterprise risk management, amongst other industry players.
According to the Co-founder of TechCastle Foundation, organisers of Payment Forum Nigeria (PAFON), Chike Onwuegbuchi: “Our goal is to enable information exchange and knowledge sharing on key industry insights issues amongst key stakeholders, with the objective of ensuring a collaborative and proactive approach to push for policies that enable growth, tackling/mitigating fraud and limiting occurrences and losses.”
He said that the Forum is driven by the reasons to “educate and inform financial service players and other stakeholders on various issues and trends (both locally and globally); proactively share data/information amongst banks, Fintechs and other service providers, to enable prompt responses to prevent and/or limit (customer-related) losses; and discuss key Payments security trends”.
He added: “Speakers will be drawn among industry players such as banks, Fintechs, mobile money operators, blockchain experts, Cybersecurity, etc., as we expect attendees from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN); e-Banking Heads; Chief Compliance Officers of banks in Nigeria; Chief Internal Auditors of banks in Nigeria; Office of The National Security Adviser; Switching companies; the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission; Licensed Mobile Payment Operators; Electronic Payments Providers; Information Security Experts; Consumer Protection; Financial Policy and Regulation; Information Technology; Legal Services; Banking Supervision; Corporate Communication; Shared Services Office; Blockchain Security Experts, among others.”
