As corporate e-Payment operations in Nigeria move to the next phase of stabilization and deepened value-driven services, bankers from 20 commercial banks in the country brainstormed on optimization of the industry-leading 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 their current e-Payment operations can be optimized in the interest and for the increased satisfaction of their public and private sectors’ customers.

In his opening remark, John Obaro, SystemSpecs’ Managing Director, said ‘as key stakeholders in Nigeria’s e-Payment ecosystem, we expect this forum to help you generate fresh ideas on how to best position your bank to gain competitive advantage through your optimization of the Remita e-Payment platform.’

Considered a very enlightening and successful event by participants, some of the bankers at the event spoke.

Ezinne Obikile, Head, Payments & Collections, First Bank Plc, ‘Support for Remita from SystemSpecs has been quite tremendous. It has made the use of the solution a wonderful experience.’

Olumide Akanbi, e-Business Union Bank Plc, ‘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’

Sumbo Sobanjo, Funds & Remittance Transfer, Sterling Bank Plc, ‘This is very good, very educative; a lot of awareness has been created’.

‘Sinmilolu Adesoba, Treasury Operations, Spring Bank Plc, ‘SystemSpecs has been providing us with excellent support. I expect them to keep it up.’

Temitope Adegoke, Operations & Settlement Bank PHB Plc, ‘The platform is good and robust. It allows for easy inter-bank transfer.’

The business session at the event was led by Obaro while the technical session was steered by Steve Ajayi, Head Remita Development SystemSpecs and Dr. Emmanuel Eze, Chief Technology Officer SystemSpecs.

Dr. Hakeem Bakare, Group Head, Financial Solutions SystemSpecs says, ‘This 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.

At the end of the event, the e-Payment bankers’ forum resolved to work together to consolidate on gains made and seek ways of continuously improving MDAs and Corporate e-Payment services in Nigeria.

It would be recalled that in January this year SystemSpecs organized a similar forum for banks in Lagos and in Abuja.

SystemSpecs, Nigeria’s leading software house are 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.