When Is The One Number Economy Coming?!
- Ashabi Adele
- Mar 29, 2019
- 2 min read
Since the computer age came upon Africa, the population has been besieged with numbers. Yes, you read it right! NUMBERS!
People across the continent have been inundated with the daunting responsibility of remembering a long and ever growing list of numbers that won't stop!
If you are an educated West African in your mid-30s for instance you would have at least a bank account, mobile phone or two, an ATM card (debit card), a drivers licence, voters card, a passport with issuance and expiry dates, and a national identity card. And these are just the basics.
For those who consider themselves to be metropolitan or woke, the list grows to include debit or credit cards for the online shopping. (You have to get 1 for each currency you want to transact in and each requires it own bank account, and you guessed it, bank account number). Let's not even talk about, passwords! Most of these require an individual password that must be 6 figures long!!!
If you're tech savvy, you would be big on Mobile banking, which means online banking and USSID codes, which come with their own usernames and passwords too! The Tech savvy crowd also use several money related apps which means an additional layer of security and yes again - more numbers!
A colleague, who is todays ranter, spoke about how he just simply stopped using most of these internet age products/ services, because he didn't want to have to deal with all the numbers anymore. Frustrated he asked, "when are we going to move to a One Number Economy in this country?", a question TheTechTiger has chosen for our first TechRant!
When you consider that the average adult African has to receive or create and memorise no less than 10 usernames or account numbers and passwords to "keep the hussle going", you begin to understand why many are becoming frustrated by the system.
From debit/ credit cards, online banking accounts, social media accounts, e- hailing accounts and event accounts, people are inundated!
We realise that a One Number Economy would be a disruption in any part of the world right now, but we believe that if Africa can take the lead in Mobile Money because it helps solve Africa-specific challenges, then we should be able to take the lead in the One Number Economy too!
Already startups like Barter App by Flutterwave have started adopting features that represent ONE (we were bound to start abbreviating it at some point, right!:-). Barter App uses a users mobile number as their address rather than collecting conventional street, city, state information that does nothing when an individuals actual location becomes an issue.
First City Monument bank has also made recognisable strides in this regard with their new platform that makes the users mobile phone their account number. Innovations like this, if built on and spread out to other sectors will help to streamline the number of numbers, usernames and passwords individuals have to keep and memorize over time, and bring us all closer to sanity again!
We apologise for this windy rant! A ranter just needed to get this off his chest!
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