The telecommunications revolution has fundamentally transformed Nigeria’s banking and financial services sector, creating the infrastructure for digital payments, fintech, mobile banking and point-of-sale transactions, economist and Managing Director of Financial Derivatives Company, Bismarck Rewane, said. Rewane said the transformation has changed how Nigerians conduct financial transactions while creating new businesses and economic opportunities. “MTN and telcos have evolved from telecommunication services into critical economic infrastructure and catalysts of growth,” Rewane said.
Rewane explained that Nigeria’s financial system was once heavily dependent on bank branches and physical cash. People had to visit banks, withdraw money and physically move funds between locations, often exposing themselves to security risks. The expansion of mobile networks, broadband and digital payment infrastructure has removed many of those limitations, allowing financial transactions to take place rapidly across locations.
He said the scale of the transformation can be seen in the growth of digital payment platforms and the volume of transactions they now process. Rewane cited Opay, which he said handles about N1.3 trillion in transactions daily, while Moniepoint processes about N1.4 trillion to N1.5 trillion daily. According to him, the growth of such platforms demonstrates how telecommunications infrastructure has enabled financial services to move beyond traditional bank branches and reach millions of Nigerians.
Rewane said the transformation has also changed the velocity of money within the economy. He explained that faster movement of money allows more transactions to take place and creates opportunities for businesses to generate income and employment. He noted that the impact of digital financial services should therefore be considered in terms of how much economic activity they enable.
According to Rewane, the jobs created by the telecommunications revolution extend well beyond the telecom companies themselves. The growth of fintech platforms, POS businesses, digital payment services and other technology-enabled enterprises has created employment across different parts of the economy. “The jobs that are created are not just the people who are working in MTN Plaza. It is the people working in the sectors that are driven by this unbalanced growth theory,” he said.
Rewane said the development illustrates the wider multiplier effect of telecommunications investment in Nigeria. He argued that digital banking, fintech and payment systems could not have reached their current scale without reliable networks and broadband infrastructure. “The NIPS and all these transfers of money would have been impossible without broadband, without the network and the backbone,” he said, adding that the sectors driven by connectivity are now an important part of Nigeria’s economic growth story.
