Swipe is Championing Credit Cards in Nigeria with Okra’s APIs

Credit cards found their way into existence between the 1940s and 1950s. That is, over 70 years ago, people were able to make purchases and pay later. With this came the opportunity to meet life’s demands even if one didn’t have enough at the moment of purchase. In turn, this meant and still means a better chance at life for anyone who owned a credit card.

However, despite the 70-year old history, Nigerians haven’t enjoyed this service, as credit cards are not commonplace in Nigeria. Although the country is gradually evolving from rigid loan structures and paper applications to instant loans, the absence of credit cards still leaves a gap.

How Swipe.ng (Swipe) is Changing Things

Swipe is stepping in to fill the gap and make credit cards available for anyone. That is, you do not have to wait for salaries to take care of your most urgent needs such as feeding, taking care of pressing medical bills, buying data to ensure that you stay connected to work, and sometimes, settling your transportation bills. This even extends to parents not having to disappoint their children anymore because their salaries haven’t come in.

For clarity, Swipe is here to ensure that Nigerians get what they need the second they need it. As beautiful as this looks, operating a credit card system in Nigeria comes with enormous challenges.

Before Okra's Open Finance APIs, it was even more challenging to operate a credit card system in Nigeria. Hence, the delay of operators coming into the space is not absurd at the end of the day. Businesses can only make an impact when their models are sustainable and profitable. As such, Swipe is now able to make use of our unique solutions to power the growth of a credit card system in Nigeria.

Okra’s Role in a Sustainable Credit Card System

For any business that hopes to issue credit cards, here are some potential hurdles:

• Seamless access to financial data of potential customers.
• Fraud from scammers applying for cards with accounts of others.
• Matching people with the amounts they can easily pay back.
• Access to complex data on their credit history. (Do they have existing loans? How many other providers do they currently use?)
• Directly charging for paybacks at the set dates at a high success rate.

Unsurprisingly, the traditional solutions for fraud prevention, credit scoring, income analysis, and automated payments do not come cheap. A business will end up spending a bulk of its profits servicing these processes. Costs will range from expensive data teams to the set-up of required infrastructure.

However, Swipe has been able to scale traditional hurdles with just a few lines of code. By integrating our APIs at Okra, they enjoy access to our data powerhouse of seasoned data analysts. With this powerhouse comes the following:

• Instant access to customer data using the Authentication product. With these, customers give Swipe secure access to their financial data in minutes. This happens for FREE!
• Fraud prevention through ownership verification. This is made possible with the Identity product.
• Income analysis. Within seconds, Swipe can reliably predict the amount a customer can comfortably service. This is done using our Income prediction and Transactions’ history APIs.Finally, when payback dates arrive, customers are debited at a lower cost instantly. This is serviced by OkraPay

What Swipe Thinks

Speaking about the impact of Okra on Swipe’s growing adoption, the co-founder Temidayo Dauda had this to say:

Since we integrated with Okra, we have been able to achieve significant milestones within the shortest time possible. Some are  >70% growth in revenue, increased user adoption, and improved user experience + collections. Being able to get reliable data from Okra has also enabled us to also serve our users better and we are excited about what we are doing together to power a credit card system in Nigeria.

Brilliant! So, what are you waiting for? Get your SwipeCard now. Start your application here. It only takes a few minutes to wrap things up.

How can we help your business?

Whatever financial service you are looking to build, we are available to step in to make things digital within minutes. Check out the product suite and find what you need here. And if you’d love to see a demo, we have you covered, book your exclusive session here. Let’s build the unimaginable together!