Applicant name: Remit Plus
Applicant Type: Product
Website: www.remitplus.net
Headquarter City: Lagos
Headquarter Country: Nigeria
Innovation Name: Off-Line Banking Application that provides affordable banking services in off-line mode to the half a billion underserved and unbanked in Africa
Innovation Type: Product
Category: Digital Innovation
Status of Innovation: In-Market
Innovation Active Since: 05/10/2022

Innovation Description: The application is the industry’s first and only off-line banking application that provides banking services in an offline mode to the underserved in Africa. Our mission is to provide easy access to financial services across Africa.

Our solution enables Financial institutions across Africa to scale their business, offer cost effective banking services to their existing users while also being able to on-board the unbanked to open bank accounts with them.

Internet Access in Africa is quite expensive with one gigabyte of data in Africa costing about US$4.47 on average, with higher prices in the central, west, and southern parts of the continent. This average is the highest compared to other continents across the world.

Over half a billion people in Africa cannot afford to access financial services or are unbanked. This is largely due to the cost of internet access that is often required to access the majority of digital financial services. Those that do have access to the internet face the high transaction fees associated with alternative banking channels and fraud rates are usually high.

The key to solving this problem and providing financial services to the unbanked in African with a secure, affordable and off-line financial access is the RemitPlus off-line banking app, which enables financial institutions to offer customers a seamless transaction with their banks without the need to pay for a costly internet subscription.

The app works in off-line mode and due to the start-ups patented and proprietary technology, banks can lower the costs of transactions, promoting financial inclusion and removing barriers to financial services for all Africans.

With our off-line banking application, financial inclusion has finally become a reality in Africa.

Innovation Inspiration: Many people in Africa are leaving under the poverty line, with about 460 Million people living below $1.9 a day, many people in Africa can’t afford access to financial services which would allow them access financial services such as loans to support their businesses especially the women.

There is an urgent need to solve this problem in Africa, this is what gave birth to our application.

Now, with our application the underserved can access banking services, have access to loan facilities, save their funds and earn interests. We are helping to build wealth across the continent.

Who can benefit from your innovation most? The half a billion underserved and unbanked people in Africa

What are you most proud of about your innovation? Millions of struggling women entrepreneurs, farmers, small traders etc who work tirelessly everyday to help feed their children can now access the much needed financial services to help live above the poverty line.

We are the the industry’s first and only off-line banking application that provides banking services in an offline mode to the underserved in Africa. Our mission is to continue to provide easy access to financial services across several millions of people in Africa.

Why do you think you should win this category? MWe have an experienced and passionate team behind what we are building.

I am a digital transformation and payment expert with over 17 years experience in the banking, remittance and crypto industry. I have worked for some of the largest multi-national financial service providers like Ria Financials, Paxful etc and oversaw revenue growth of more than $2 Billion at these companies.

My CTO (Ifeanyi Ifeabunike) is the found of Meri Technologies, a company that has trained over 200 developers and he has over 15 years experience as a a developer and has built banking applications for over 12 financial institutions with revenues of more than $3 Billion.

According to Mckinsey report (https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/the-future-of-payments-in-africa) revenues made by banks in Africa is about $24 Billion. The market opportunity is huge and when more people are on-boarded and gain access to financial services the revenue potential is expected to be more than $50 Billion