Business
Fintech Growth: Experts Harp On Policies, Enabling Environment
Financial experts at the ongoing Future Banking Tech West Africa Conference have called for an enabling environment and policies for fintech to thrive.
The Tide reports that the Future Banking Technology conference was organised to address the full value chain of West Africa’s banking and financial sector to achieve more financial inclusion and sustainable growth.
The conference had the theme: “ Innovation in Regulation – Overcoming Gaps in Rural Banking Strategies”.
According to Steven Ambore, Head Digital Financial Services, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), fintech globally bridges financial inclusion gap.
He said that the CBN recognised the importance of digital financial services and had strategised to ensure fintech’s adoption by the banking industry.
“To make any progress, we need to focus on creating the enabling environment for fintech to thrive, and CBN has instituted strategies toward that.
“There is a roadmap for that: introduction of a tradition licensing, trying to understand what fintech does and its problems, holding round table with stakeholders and others,” he said.
Ambore said that women and the youth were the most financially excluded, adding that the CBN was working toward bridging the gap.
He called on the financial sector to make financial services more accessible and affordable as well as ensure it would meet specific needs.
The Principal Economics Officer, Ministry of Finance, Ghana, Mr Benjamin Tordah-Klu said that a proper regulatory framework would be needed for fintech to thrive.
According to him, a lot is being done in the fintech space, especially in the area of payment, urging their adoption.
The Head, Financial Literacy Office, Consumer Protection Department, CBN, Mr Damola Atanda said that apart from an enabling environment, financial literacy was of essence.
According to him, we have technology, but the problem is what we do with the technology. We have to make it impact on the people.
“Forty million excluded Nigerians in rural areas have been living their lives well without technology; introducing financial technology to them will be strange because they will be wondering its use.
“How to get them to understand banking solutions is where financial literacy comes in, and they should be made to understand the enormous responsibilities that come with it,” he said.
He advised that the CBN should work with the National Youth Service Corp to enlist corp members to educate people in rural areas on the benefits of digital services.
Atanda listed other activities of CBN for boosting financial inclusion to include development of a portal to standardise financial literacy and putting together a consumer protection framework.
Earlier, Dr Evans Woherem, Founder and Chairman, Digital Africa Global Consult Ltd. and Compumetrics Solutions, said that financial inclusion and fintech were apt.
According to him, financial inclusion is important because of the need to ensure that the generality of people, especially from ages 18, become users of financial institution.
“It is so unfortunate that these are financially excluded; there is the need to ensure that things are done to include them.
“Fintech is something that we also need to pay more attention to, as it is an exponential technology that will disrupt the banking system.
“”The banking system has come a long way – from the long queue banking to the realtime one, but this is not enough; we need to embrace fintech in the banking system,” he said.
He said there was the need for West Africans to catch up on technology adoption, adding that the conference provided an opportunity for experts to come up with decisions that would help the sector to move forward.
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.
