UBA, fintechs unite to secure Africa’s payment future

In a landmark move that signals a new era for Africa's financial landscape, United Bank for Africa (UBA) has taken a decisive step away from the traditional friction between legacy banks and emerging fintechs. Our inaugural Fintech Conference in Lagos, themed ‘Navigating Regulatory Milestones: The Future of Bank–Fintech Partnerships,’ brought together over 20 industry titans, including OPay, PalmPay, and Mastercard, alongside representatives from the Central Bank of Nigeria. The message was unequivocal: the future prosperity of Africa's digital economy hinges on a unified approach.

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The future is not banks versus fintechs but banks with fintechs. When we combine scale, trust, and regulatory depth with innovation and agility, we unlock a financial system that works for far more Africans.

UBA's Executive Director of Digital Banking, Emmanuel Lamptey, powerfully set the tone, urging the industry to dismantle competitive silos. The future, he articulated, is not a battle of banks versus fintechs, but a synergy of banks *with* fintechs. By combining the scale and trust of established institutions with the innovation and agility of fintechs, we can unlock a financial system that truly serves a broader spectrum of Africans. Fintech leaders echoed this sentiment, emphasizing that the rapid pace of innovation in Africa necessitates collaboration, making it a non-negotiable imperative for achieving scale.

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Collaboration is no longer optional. The priority now is speed, how quickly we can remove the barriers between fintechs and banks to unlock scale.

The conference also confronted the escalating challenge of cyber threats in an increasingly digitalized financial world. As AI becomes more integrated into banking services, exemplified by UBA's AI assistant Leo, the security landscape has transformed. Mastercard's Peter Ehizogie rightly cautioned that each leap in convenience brings a corresponding leap in risk. This high-tech arms race, as UBA's Head of Digital Banking Sales, Shamsideen Fashola, described it, demands that institutions invest as aggressively in defense as they do in innovation. The unified call to action for regulators and operators to streamline cross-border integration barriers is critical for UBA's vision of a seamless payment corridor across the 20 African countries we serve.

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Each wave of innovation—instant payments, cards, gateways, and now AI—has expanded opportunity while introducing new risks. Collaboration is what ensures progress is sustained, not disrupted.