Pan-African banking group Ecobank Transnational International (ETI) has recorded a major milestone by launching its Open Banking strategy which aims to accelerate partnership with Fintechs and other partners across Africa. After a successful pilot run with select Fintechs in early 2020, the Pan-African Banking Sandbox of Ecobank Group is now live and accessible, on request, to the African Fintech community. The Sandbox allows Fintechs to access Ecobank’s Application Programming Interface (APIs) for the development of innovative solutions. The Sandbox is a major milestone for the Ecobank Group on its Open Banking strategy and it will accelerate partnership with Fintechs and other Partners across Africa.
Sources at the Bank say that the Sandbox will position the annual Ecobank Fintech Challenge beyond a competition to a Developer Platform and Marketplace of fintech solutions. Adding voice to this, the Group Executive, Technology and Operations at the Bank, Mr. Eddy Ogbogu stresses that “ss the Pan-African bank, Ecobank is committed to the growth of the Pan-African Fintech Ecosystem. This Sandbox is designed to facilitate this objective. Innovative Fintechs, start-ups, product developers and technology partners are invited to leverage the platform to actualise their pan-African dreams.”
Group Senior Fintech Advisor – Djiba Diallo added that “The Sandbox is designed to be relevant to the needs of the Ecosystem. There were really positive reviews from the pilot as well as some valuable feedback which helped in fine tuning the platform for Live launch. The pilot indeed helped both Ecobank and Fintechs get the best out of the Sandbox. We are excited about the new opportunities it brings to the ecosystem and customers.”
According to Omosalewa Adeyemi, Global Head of Expansion & Partnerships at Flutterwave , “his is an innovative platform where we were able to carry out mobile money, card payment transactions conveniently. The platform also provided APIs that allow a merchant identify itself for future merchant terminal creation as well as generate unique merchant and dynamic QR payment codes Merchants in any case are also able to generate their account statement for holistic account overview. We look forward to incorporating these services on our payment platform.”