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More Nigerians now cardholders — MasterCard boss

By BusinessNews Staff on May 28, 2014

Global payment company, MasterCard, has said the cash-less policy of the Central bank of Nigeria and the use of MasterCard cards for financial transaction are already yielding encouraging results.

The Vice-President and Area Business Head, MasterCard West Africa, Omokehinde Ojomuyide, who stated this in Lagos, stressed that the development had made more Nigerians to become cardholders.

She spoke in Lagos when the company hosted some Nigerians after the final of the UEFA Champions league match between Real Madrid and Real Atletico Madrid.

She restated the commitment of MasterCard to the CBN’s cash-less policy drive.

Ojomuyide said, “Nigerians believe in cash-less policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and MasterCard does too. So, we are doing something that they value as well. Nigerians have told us their MasterCard story; they’ve told us how cash-less and MasterCard have become part of their lifestyle.

“Nigerians are going cash-less. They have told us a lot of stories about how cash-less and using the MasterCard have come into their everyday life. They use it to carry out business transactions, saving lives and almost everything. There are things more important than money – our goal is to put a smile on the faces of our cardholders.”

Ojomuyide said MasterCard cards were introduced into the country some four years ago and was meant to make life more meaningful to users.

She expressed satisfaction at the way Nigerians had embraced the card.

Between 2013 and this year, more Nigerians have been enlisted in the use of MasterCard for business and financial transactions, according to the vice-president, who viewed the development as a plus for the economy.

She inferred that the outcome of the research the organisation carried out recently on the users of the card was positive on the lives of the users who shared their success stories, noting that the company was willing to take Nigerians to the next level.

While noting that Nigerian used the card to transact business locally and overseas, Ojokuyide reckoned that judging from where the country was coming from, the organisation had recorded some progress with electronic payment and financial inclusion.

She observed that one of the quickest ways to make Nigerians have formal financial product was to put a prepaid card in the proposed national identity card.

“The next thing we all need to do as the government, the bank and everyone in the ecosystem is to encourage people to begin to use the formal financial product in their hands. This is not going to be very easy but it is attainable in Nigeria,” she added.

While she concurred that there were challenges introducing the product into the country’s economy, Ojomuide submitted that they were not bothered about the difficulty but the opportunities that abound with it.

[Punch]

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