Technology

Verve Enables Seamless Payments for Millions of Consumers

Published

2 months ago

11/07/2025

As Africa’s payments ecosystem continues to evolve, contactless technology is emerging as a critical driver of speed, security, and convenience for both consumers and merchants. Leading this transformation is Verve, Africa’s foremost domestic payment card and digital token brand, which is accelerating adoption through its rapidly growing network of contactless solutions.

With over 30 million Verve contactless cards issued to date, the company has made remarkable progress in simplifying everyday payments. Whether at supermarkets, fuel stations, airport terminals, or restaurants, Verve’s contactless cards are enabling faster, more secure transactions across Nigeria and other key African markets.

A standout feature of Verve’s offering is its extensive acceptance footprint. Today, the contactless cards are accepted at about 90% of payment terminals across retail outlets nationwide. This high level of integration not only enhances user convenience but also reflects the strength of Verve’s merchant network and its strategic partnerships with financial institutions and fintech providers.

Verve’s Tap-and-Go solution is engineered to streamline the payment experience while maintaining rigorous security standards. Every transaction is powered in compliance with global security protocols and offering users both protection and ease of use.

The company’s investment in contactless infrastructure is guided by a clear strategy: to reduce payment friction and enhance transaction speed, without compromising security. This includes close collaboration with banks, fintechs, and merchants to enable seamless integration and consistent service delivery across the payment value chain.

In a region where terminal inefficiencies and payment delays can impact business performance, Verve’s approach is already creating measurable value. For merchants, shorter queues and increased transaction throughput improve customer service and operational efficiency. For consumers, faster payments enhance satisfaction and build trust in digital payment channels.

What sets Verve apart is its thoughtful adaptation of technology to local market realities. For example, the requirement for PIN verification after tapping adds an extra layer of security, addressing consumer concerns around fraud and unauthorised transactions. This localization of global standards reflects Verve’s commitment to innovation that is both secure and contextually relevant

Industry analysts project sustained growth in contactless adoption across Africa, driven by mobile-first populations that increasingly demand fast, secure, and reliable transaction experiences. Verve’s early leadership in this space firmly positions it as a key enabler in Africa’s payment transformation journey.

As the company scales its infrastructure and deepens strategic partnerships across markets, Verve remains focused on delivering seamless, secure, and inclusive payment solutions, meeting the rising demand for digital financial services across the continent.

This contactless push is part of a broader innovation strategy, as Verve continues to invest in customer-centric technologies that align with global best practices while addressing the unique needs of African markets.

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Technology

Zoho Unveils Zia LLM, Expands AI Suite With Agents, Studio Tools

Published

17 hours ago

28/08/2025

Modupe Gbadeyanka

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

A global technology company, Zoho, has introduced its proprietary large language model known as Zia LLM, trained specifically for business use cases, keeping privacy and governance at its core, which has resulted in lowering the inference cost, passing on that value to the customers, while also ensuring that they are able to utilise AI productively and efficiently.

In a statement, the company also announced the launched of a no-code agent builder, Zia Agent Studio, over 25 deployable Zia agents, and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to open up its vast library of actions to third-party agents.

The Country Head for Zoho Nigeria, Mr Kehinde Ogundare, noted that these products demonstrate the organisation’s longstanding aim to build foundational technology focused on protection of customer data, breadth and depth of capabilities because of the business context, and value.

Zia LLM leveraged NVIDIA’s AI accelerated computing platform. It comprises three models with 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion and 7 billion parameters, each separately trained and optimised for contextual applicability that benchmark competitively against comparable open source models in the market.

The three models allow Zoho to always optimise the right model for the right user context, striking the balance between power and resource management. In the short term, Zoho will scale Zia LLM’s model sizes, starting with the first set of parameter increases by the end of 2025.

While Zoho supports many LLM integrations for users, including ChatGPT, Llama, and DeepSeek, Zia LLM continues its commitment to data privacy by allowing customers to keep their data on its servers, leveraging the latest AI capabilities without sending their data to AI cloud providers.

As for the Zia Agent Studio, Zoho has simplified it to be fully prompt-based (with the option to use low-code) and includes ready-made access to over 700 actions across its products.

Agents built by users can be deployed autonomously, triggered by button click, with rule-based automation, or even summoned within customer conversations.

To enable immediate adoption of agentic technology, Zoho has developed a roster of AI agents contextually baked right into its products. These agents can be used across various business activities, handling relevant actions based on the role of the user. These include Customer Service Agent for Zoho Desk that can process incoming customer requests, understand the context, and either answer directly or triage them to a human rep, providing an efficient first line of assistance.

At the time of deployment, an agent can be provisioned as a digital employee, maintaining the user access permission structure defined within the organisation. Admins can perform behavioural audits as well as performance and impact analyses on digital employees, ensuring that every agent is working as effectively as possible and within clear guardrails.

These agents are available in Agent Marketplace from where customers can easily deploy them. Ecosystem partners, ISVs, and individual developers will be able to create agents and host them on the Zia Agents Marketplace in coming months.

The company plans to add more skills to Ask Zia, allowing it to act as an assistant to Finance teams, Customer Support teams to start with. Support for the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol will be implemented, allowing Zia Agents to interact and collaborate with each other, as well as collaborate with agents on other platforms.

Technology

AI Can Drive Nigeria’s GDP Growth by 20%—NITDA

Published

19 hours ago

28/08/2025

Adedapo Adesanya

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mr Kashifu Inuwa, has projected that the digital economy, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), could drive the country’s economy up to 20 per cent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth.

Mr Inuwa said at the 3rd Economic Confidential Lecture in Abuja on Wednesday that AI was no longer optional but essential.

“Those who fail to upskill will be replaced. AI can free up 20 per cent of time for higher productivity, and nations leading in AI will lead the world.”

According to him, the country can not afford to miss the fourth industrial revolution after losing out in the first three revolutions.

Mr Inuwa said that there were ongoing collaborations with the Ministry of Education to build digital literacy into the country’s national curriculum, and with the office of Head of Service of the Federation to enhance civil service training .

“Market women can now connect with customers through mobile technology. But as we connect, we must also protect, and cybersecurity is a critical pillar.”

The President and Chairman of Council, Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Mr Ike Neliaku, said that the country must ensure that participation in the digital global economy is inclusive, innovative, and sustainable.

Mr Neliaku, was represented by NIPR fellow, Mr Afolabi Olajuwon, urged the country to be committed to building capacity, investing in infrastructure, and creating policies that enable innovation to thrive.

“We are living in a period where technology is reshaping governance, trade, education, healthcare and every aspect of human endeavour.

“Nations that fail to embrace the digital revolution risk being left behind, while those that seize the opportunity can leapfrog barriers to growth and development,” Mr Neliaku said.

He said that the country was blessed with a dynamic youth population, abundant talent and a spirit of innovation,adding that must advance its embrace of this new reality.

Mr Neliaku said that the Renewed Hope Agenda challenged Nigerians to harness technology, not merely as consumers, but as creators, innovators and exporters of digital solutions.

He said that to achieve this, there should be collaboration among government, private sector and the academia, adding that the media was not optional, but critical and essential.

“I also wish to commend the unveiling of the three landmark publications: Diplomacy and digital innovation: youths’ insights. Healing Nigeria: A chronicle of health reform and hope, and also the Renewed hope in central banking.

“Each of these publications reflects a thoughtful attempt to capture pressing national and global issues, while offering practical insights for policy and practice.

“They are not just books, but tools for shaping informed conversations and evidence-based decision-making,” Mr Neliaku said.

Other experts identified AI as a key factor to be embraced to drive Nigeria’s economy into a prosperous one.

They canvassed for the deployment of technology and AI into the country’s current struggle for economic diversification and general development.

Specifically, they called for the adoption of AI to enhance Nigeria’s growth in the fourth global industrial revolution.

Technology

ntel Eyes 2026 Return to Nigeria’s Telco Market

Published

3 days ago

26/08/2025

Adedapo Adesanya

By Adedapo Adesanya

Nigeria’s pioneering telecoms operator, ntel (formerly NITEL), is eyeing a return from dormancy, with a preliminary target of first quarter of 2026.

According to a report from a tech platform, Technology Times, the return of the telco is underpinned by a strategic N30 billion injection from the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON).

Once the dominant pre-GSM era provider with both wireline and mobile services via NITEL and Mtel, the operator fell into prolonged dormancy following the privatization of the Nigerian telecommunications sector.

After NatCom Development & Investment Limited acquired the business for $252.25 million in 2015, ntel struggled to regain traction. Now, AMCON is spearheading a revival, aiming to reintroduce ntel as an asset-light, infrastructure-centric competitor in Nigeria’s telecoms space.

According to the publication, a cornerstone of the revival plan is the appointment of Mr Soji Maurice-Diya, formerly CEO of American Tower Nigeria, to lead the company. He will succeed Mr Adrian Wood, a former chief executive of MTN Nigeria.

At the helm with extensive leadership experience across sectors such as telecom infrastructure (ATC), oil (ExxonMobil), tech (IBM), consulting (EY), and entrepreneurship (as co-founder of Hash App), Mr Maurice-Diya is expected to drive the execution of this turnaround plan.

AMCON’s intervention represents both a financial stabilization effort and a bid to rescue strategic national telecom assets, in line with targets set by President Bola Tinubu.

The telco holds a Unified Access Service licence from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). It is reportedly exploring a cost-efficient Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) model, potentially piggybacking on infrastructure from incumbent operators.

This choice arises from a sobering analysis: fully competing with Nigeria’s top mobile network operators (MTN, Airtel, Glo, and T2/9mobile), which collectively manage over 171 million lines. The telco would require an estimated N7.68 trillion ($5 billion) in capital. Instead, the MVNO approach allows ntel to focus on branding, customer experience, and differentiated services, particularly to youth, fintech, and rural prepaid segments without owning costly infrastructure, the publication analysed.

Despite previous setbacks, ntel retains key assets including spectrum holdings, fibre-optic infrastructure inherited from NITEL, and landing rights on international submarine cables. These which support a broadband-first strategy to help bridge Nigeria’s digital divide.