70 bankers from 20 commercial banks in the country met last week in Lagos to brainstorm on optimization of Remita e-Payment platform. The one-day workshop was organized by SystemSpecs for banks to review the progress of e-Payment in Nigeria, share experience and come up with technical and business strategies on how the industry can be optimized

Mr. John Obaro, SystemSpecs’ MD/CEO, challenges the participants to generate fresh ideas on how to best position their banks to gain competitive advantage through the optimization of the Remita e-Payment platform.

Mr. Ezinne Obikile, Head, Payments & Collections, First Bank Plc, says that the “support for Remita from SystemSpecs has been quite tremendous. It has made the use of the solution a wonderful experience.” Mr. Olumide Akanbi, of e-Business unit, Union Bank Plc, says, “I thank SystemSpecs for introducing Remita because it has greatly reduced the e-Payment headache. We were the first adapter of this platform among the banks for use by our customers; we have no reason to regret this decision because the benefits are immense. This forum has been quite educative and interactive”.

In his own remarks, Sumbo Sobanjo, Funds & Remittance Transfer, Sterling Bank Plc, says “This is very good, very educative; a lot of awareness has been created”. Similarly, ‘Sinmilolu Adesoba, Treasury Operations, Spring Bank Plc says, “SystemSpecs has been providing us with excellent support. I expect them to keep it up.” While Temitope Adegoke, Operations & Settlement Bank PHB Plc, says “The platform is good and robust. It allows for easy inter-bank transfer.”

Dr. Hakeem Bakare, Group Head, Financial Solutions SystemSpecs says, the event has once again demonstrated stakeholders commitment to the success of President Yar’Adua directives on e-Payment and to position Nigeria as a leading light in Africa in the application of e-Payment in financial transactions.

Dr. Akin Oduntan, SystemSpecs Head Remita Business Development Group enumerated what a true e-payment solution should do. Some of these include ability to; view your consolidated bank balances on a single computer screen, process all your payments electronically from end-to-end, conduct multi-bank activity from just one place - payment platform, and ability to replicate your existing payments approval, workflow and authorization limits

He also said that a true e-Payment solution should enable you; make payments to micro-finance banks, institute amount-based security, send detailed credit advices via SMS & e-mail, view reports & audit trail, deliver schedules to relevant parties, and most importantly should be easy to use by any customer.

SystemSpecs, Nigeria’s leading software house is the providers of Remita, which is a corporate e-payment solution that rides on secured e-payment platforms to deliver funds to bank accounts and associated schedules to relevant bodies at the click of a button. With Remita organisations can pay vendors, suppliers and staff salaries. Pension contributions and all forms of taxes can also be remitted to the appropriate beneficiaries from the comfort of any office.