Fintech
The Role of Trust in Building FinTech for Africa
Yanmo Omorogbe is the co-founder and COO of Bamboo, a Nigerian digital wealth management platform. The startup has raised funding from investors such as Tiger Global, Gerloft, and Michael Seibel of Y Combinator.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What steps are you taking to build trust with your users?
Trust starts the moment you start interacting with our brand, even before you become a user. Our social media is aesthetically pleasing. We give people news, not sell them dreams. We try in all our communications to be direct and not confuse people. They trust us with their hard-earned money, and we don’t take that for granted. So if there’s ever a problem, our customer service team tries to respond within 10 minutes. We’re also as honest and transparent as possible when we haven’t done things right.
What role does longevity play in building user trust in emerging markets like Nigeria?
Longevity and trust are intertwined. When you’ve been around long enough, you become part of people’s consciousness. So, they don’t think about your death. Especially in financial services in markets like Nigeria, the fundamental thing that creates a lack of trust is that people think, “How do we know you’re not going to disappear with our money?”
An example is when traditional banks have downtime and people can’t make payments. Customers complain about the lack of service, but they don’t think there’s a chance the bank has failed. If you look at some of the most trusted financial institutions globally, one of the most common denominators is resilience.
How are you navigating government regulations?
A big part of working with regulators is education on both sides: providing them with information about what we are doing and learning from them what protections are needed to execute. We also work with regulators to develop frameworks where necessary, so that everyone is comfortable with all the issues that affect our business. We have licenses in Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa, which has required us to work with them to explain our product.