Mbabane: The local banking sector is taking notice that the world is evolving and the future is going to be different from the country now. FinTech is taking the world of banking by storm including Eswatini. This update was sourced during a conference on Financial Innovation that was hosted by the Central Bank of Eswatini in partnership with the Financial Services Regulatory Authority, Eswatini Communications Commission and the Center for Financial Inclusion.
Chief Executive Officer of Eswatini Communications Commission, Mvilawephi Dlamini told delegates that it is incumbent that ICT is the global future and it is key to national advancement. Central Bank of Eswatini Governor Majozi Sithole highlighted that the proliferation of the new financial technological innovations s here to bring many opportunities as well as challenges to the financial sector. “The proliferation of the new financial technological innovations is continuously posing opportunities as well as challenges to the financial sector, consequently, this has a relook into conventional macro-economic and regulatory policies and their effectiveness,” said the governor. He said like innovations, if well harnessed, financial innovation has the potential to change the financial sector for the better as well as the way as the people will access financial services.
Furthermore, the governor said the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group recently launched a Bali FinTech Agenda, which has a set of 12 policy elements that are aimed at helping countries harness the benefits and opportunities of rapid advances in financial technology that will transform the provision of banking services, while at the same managing the inherent risks. Application Lab Head at Insight2Impact, Dumsani Dube urged everyone in attendance to go back to their respective organization and start leap frogging towards reaching the FinTech standard. However, Dube warned that for effective achievement of a FinTech standard organizations and nations alike need to work collaboratively.
FINTECHS ARE THREATENED
It was noted during the conference that there were challenges facing FinTechs globally, with the most prevalent issue being over-regulating. Dumsani Dube pointed that cited phone company MTN and Amazon, which were both started in 1994 yet a Forbes report showed that Amazon to this date is worth US Dollars 1 trillion while MTN stands at US Dollars 9 billion. Dube attributed the difference between these multi-national companies to regulations which have gone to cripple the companies. Moshtaq Ahmed NzbSys AND DataNet said if governments can start channelling investments in other areas such as technology, the FinTech decline could by now be a thing of the past. He asserted that life would be easy if the treasury office could accept payments via EFT.
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