Emma Okonji
The cashless economy initiative of the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which seeks to promote financial
inclusion in Nigeria, received boost in Lagos, when the Lagos State
Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) and Visa provided support worth over N3.5
million to winners of the second edition of its Cashless Lagos
Hackathon.
The teams, which include Team Blended,
Team Maverick, and Team LagosPay were presented with a check of N2
million, N1.5 million and N500, 000 respectively for taking the top
three positions.
LSETF officials said the hackathon is in
line with the Lagos State’s commitment to encourage and support the
tech ecosystem in the state. The trust fund has so far issued N80
million workspace vouchers to 50 startups. It plans to issue 25 more
before the end of the year.
The Cashless Lagos Hackthon was launched
by Visa in partnership with Lagos Innovates – an initiative of LSETF,
and Passion Incubator with the objective of creating technology based
financial solutions to help Lagos MSMEs carry out daily cashless
transactions.
There were seven teams that competed for
the grand prize of N2 million. The teams – Akuk, Blended, Eko Wallet,
Tradekiosk, Lagos Pay, Mavericks, and Cashbox – had an opportunity to
meet and interview five loan beneficiaries from LSETF. During the
interview they were able to learn some of the payment challenges faced
by the small business owners. With the knowledge, each of them went to
build a solution around it.
Addressing journalists after the cheque
presentation, the Executive Secretary of LSETF, Akin Oyebode, said: “The
Hackthon is designed to solve problems around cash management for small
businesses. What we have done here is that we brought our beneficiaries
– five women who are beneficiaries of our loan program – we brought
them to see how we can use technology to improve their business. Over
the course of this weekend the seven teams have listened to them,
interviewed them and have gone to create solutions to help solve some
problems they have identified, especially relating to receiving payments
and going cashless.”
Although the selected ideas from the
start-ups were still prototype solutions, the organisers, however,
expect that the winning teams will go ahead with the guidance of mentors
to translate them into real products that have market value. Oyebode
noted the presence of bank executives at the hackathon who were also
interested in seeing how they can support the roll out of the solutions
to their own customers, would further encourage banks to support SMEs in
developing solutions that will further drive the cashless economy
initiative of the CBN.
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