Friday, 23 September 2022

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Good morning!

Dennis here,

It's always a breath of fresh air when a fintech announces a solution and you check it out and it's a solution that is actually needed. Not the umpteenth way to as one Twitter said "to pay for my plantain."

This week saw Nigerian tech companies indeed rolling out products that will be useful to many Nigerians. There was GIG solving e-commerce problems for Nigerians looking to shop from China. Yesterday, Flutterwave announced that it has integrated Google Pay into its app.

Stick around for more details.

Below are the tech stories and news you need to know to start your day, carefully curated by Technext.

Summary of the news

A new report shows that Airtel has the fastest average download speed in Nigeria in Q2 2022
Glovo has been fined $78M for labour breaches in Spain
Flutterwave has integrated Google Pay into its payment options
Ibukun Awosika and Leslie Maasdorp are the only Africans on Binance’s new advisory board
First Bank said it will suspend international transactions on its naira cards at the end of this month
Lazer Pay has announced new features for users

Airtel leads in download speed in Q2 2022

Data from Ookla has shown that MTN South Africa delivered the fastest median download speeds across analysed African telecom operators, at 65.95 Mbps in Q2 2022, Technext reports.

In Nigeria, Airtel leads the pack, both in terms of median download and upload speed in Q2 2022, averaging 30.35 Mbps download speed and upload speed at 10.28 Mbps. In comparison, MTN Nigeria registered a 26.30 Mbps download speed and 9.13 Mbps upload speed.

According to the report, Airtel surpassed other telecom competitors, in Nigeria, for the best consistency rating on cell throughout Q3 2021 at 89.4%, which is a 7% increase from Q2 when Airtel had a consistency score of 82.5%, while broadband supplier, ipNX, had the most effective pace rating (21.66%) and consistency rating (40.2%) in Nigeria throughout Q3 2021.

Airtel registered the quickest pace rating at 33.43% and Kano was identified as the location with the fastest network reception for downloads and uploads throughout Q3 2021.

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Glovo fined $78M for labour breach in Spain

Spain’s homegrown on-demand delivery app, Glovo — which since the end of last year has been majority owned by Germany’s Delivery Hero — has been fined €79 million (~$79 million) for breaches of labour laws related to the employment classification of couriers, TechCrunch reports.

El Pais reported that the record sanction for the company was issued for a finding that the startup had 10,614 workers falsely classed as “autónomos” (aka self employed) in Barcelona and Valencia, after the Department of Labour found the couriers were in an employment relationship with the company.

Labor minister, Yolanda Díaz, accused Glovo of harming the rights of workers and obstructing the Department’s inspection, El Pais reported. A minute part of the fine was issued for this obstruction — with the bulk (€63.2 million) pertaining to misclassified couriers working in Barcelona (where more than 8,300 riders were found to have been falsely classed as self employed), and a smaller chunk (€15.7 million) issued over the close to 2,300 misclassified riders in Valencia.

The total size of the penalty was equivalent to over 13% of Glovo’s 2021 revenue.

Flutterwave integrates Google Pay

Google Pay is now available on Flutterwave, in keeping with the promise the embattled Nigerian fintech company made in February this year.

With this integration, Google Pay users worldwide can pay businesses on Flutterwave within an average transaction completion time of 3 minutes. According to Flutterwave, this move will reduce the cart abandonment rate for its online businesses, TechCabal reports.

Google Pay was designed to enable safe, seamless and contactless payments for users. It uses near-field communication (NFC) technology to facilitate fund transfers for retailers in physical stores. Users can also save their card details into the Google Wallet service and make online or in-app payments.

Olugbenga Agboola, Flutterwave’s co-founder and CEO said of the move:

The continued and rapid growth of Flutterwave is due to our commitment to building a platform with simplified payments for everyone. The GooglePay payment option will attract more international customers and increase the current success rates for businesses on Flutterwave.

Integrating with Google pay will allow users across the globe to participate in the booming e-commerce ecosystem in Africa. It will enable us to further fulfil our promise of creating endless possibilities for all.

Ibukun Awosika & Leslie Maasdorp are the only Africans on Binance’s new advisory board

Binance has announced the creation of a new Global Advisory Board (GAB) that includes two Africans; Leslie Maasdorp from South Africa and Ibukun Awosika from Nigeria. The new board is composed of well-known 11 members who are experts in public policy, government, finance, economics, and corporate governance, Technext reports.

Other members of the board include Former U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, Max Bacus (USA), Advisor of the Korea Presidential Committee, HyungRin Bang (Korea), Managing Partner, Cathay Capital, Bruno Bezard (France), Former Minister of the Economy, Brazil and Henrique de Campos Meirelles (Brazil).

According to an announcement from the company, the primary goal of the board is to advise Binance on some of the most complex regulatory, political, and social issues confronting the entire crypto industry as it rapidly grows and evolves.

Ibukun Awosika said of the appointment:

The transparency and accountability with which Binance seeks to deliver services to its clients is impressive. As a company of the future, Binance must continue to evolve, build and find solutions in real-time.

I am proud to play a role as a member of its Global advisory board and to e a part of truly transforming the web3 economy.

Leslie Maasdorp said of the appointment:

The blockchain and crypto industry can act as a true catalyst for growth and economic opportunities. For the cities that are willing to partner with companies like Binance in order to create progressive regulations and an effective Web3 environment, I expect it to enable a number of investments into the space.

I look forward to working with a number of experts as part of Binance’s Global Advisory Board in order to collaborate.

Binance founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao said of the appointment:

With the GAB, we’re supercharging our ability to manage regulatory complexity by tapping into the highest level of expertise available anywhere in the world.

This collaboration between Binance and the leading experts of the GAB is a testament to our focus on compliance, transparency and ensuring a collaborative relationship with the world’s regulators as they develop sensible regulations worldwide.

First Bank to suspend int’l transactions on naira cards Sep 30

First Bank of Nigeria says it will suspend international transactions on its naira Mastercard from September 30, The Cable reports.

In March, financial institutions reduced the international spending limit on naira cards from $100 to $20 monthly.

In a recent statement to its customers, the bank said such transactions would not be available on its naira credit card, virtual card and visa prepaid naira card.

See an excerpt from First Bank's statement below:

Due to current market realities on foreign exchange, you will no longer be able to use the Naira Mastercard, Naira Credit Card, our Virtual card and Visa Prepaid Naira card for international transactions. This will take effect on 30 September 2022.

Please use your Visa Debit Multicurrency Card, Visa Prepaid (USD) Card and Visa Gold Credit Card to continue transacting abroad with limits of up to $10,000.

Lazer Pay has announced new updates for users

Laser Pay, the Nigerian crypto payment gateway startup has rolled out new features for users. See some noteworthy ones below:

With the launch of the beta version of the crypto payment startup, all businesses have to do is integrate a collections widget in their apps or collect payments through a link.

Lazerpay has added fiat payout options for its users. While users could only receive payouts in stablecoins before, they can now pay out to multiple currencies in countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, the US, the UK, India, China, and the UAE. Lazerpay merchants can now pay out in USD anywhere in the world, and in Nigerian naira and Ghana cedis in Africa.

Njoku Emmanuel, Lazerpay CEO said of the update that:

The first version of Lazerpay was simple in that all businesses could do was accept and pay out in stablecoins. It currently serves over 2,000 businesses spread across five continents. However, we quickly realised that an additional layer of converting stablecoins to fiat was needed.

To improve our users’ experience, we decided to build the second version of our payment gateway to allow merchants to withdraw their crypto payments in fiat, directly from their dashboards.