virtual account numbers came in<\/a>. Charges were a bit less, and from the customer\u2019s point of view, they were more convenient and safer. For cards, you have to save your card, and then we can debit at any time.\u00a0<\/p>\nJoin 30,000 other smart people like you<\/p>\n
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In the very early days, not many people were comfortable with the fact that we could debit their accounts randomly. They wanted to be in control of depositing their funds themselves, so pay with transfer, which is the virtual account number innovation, was easier for a lot of customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But even at that, we were still paying a lot of charges to Paystack, Flutterwave, and Monnify on the virtual account numbers, and we realised that we needed to own this aspect of the value chain.<\/p>\n
If we owned and issued our own account numbers to PocketApp users, then we would significantly reduce our third-party payment costs. Now, third parties gave us a lot of problems because they were working with banks whose systems were not the best.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So when there are issues, PiggyVest would have to take responsibility. That\u2019s why you see us issuing statements multiple times to calm users down when they encounter issues.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
All that is happening in the backend is just us speaking to Paystack to put pressure on their partner banks to resolve the delays, because there was nothing we could do on our own, and our hands were pretty much tied.<\/p>\n
However, customers often don\u2019t understand this. Neither do they care. They just know that they sent money to their PiggyVest, but it has not \u201centered.\u201d That was causing a lot of distrust. Customers don\u2019t care about who you\u2019re working with on the backend. They only know that they sent you money, but they haven\u2019t received it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With PocketApp, we\u2019ve secured the licensing for all that, and we\u2019ve now built our own infrastructure; that\u2019s why we can issue our own account numbers. Now, we control the entire process. If there\u2019s a delay, we know exactly where the money is, we can fix it very quickly, and there\u2019s just more trust going forward in terms of people\u2019s experience of the app.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Currently, this covers the Flex Naira and House Money products. Why are you beginning with those products, and when can we expect other PiggyVest products to be covered?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, the only products in PiggyVest that allow you to fund with an account number are Flex and House Money. There\u2019s no other product that allows you to fund with an account number.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We expect you to fund your Flex, and then you can proceed to fund your other wallets. Piggybank is still strictly Flex, and I think recently PocketApp. Now, the reason is this. With Flex, many people put money there and can withdraw it at any time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a tendency for fraud to occur if you can just take someone\u2019s card, fund your Flex, and withdraw it at any time. That\u2019s why we removed funding Flex with cards, and that\u2019s why we made Flex strictly account numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So you\u2019re doing the transfer, and then that\u2019s fine. It\u2019s also cheaper, and it\u2019s easier. Now owning our infrastructure means we can include account numbers in all the other wallets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since it\u2019s our own infrastructure, we can manage the costs and everything else better. But we\u2019re starting with Flex and House Money. I think the next one we\u2019ll introduce will be Safe Lock.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How does introducing these virtual account numbers affect your relationship with the banking partners you already work with?\u00a0<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t owe them anything. We don\u2019t even owe them loyalty. At this point, they\u2019re begging us to use them because we have the volumes that they need.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t interact directly with the banks. We only interact with the PSSPs, so it does not really affect anything. They will continue their business with their other merchants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The main reason PiggyVest has decided to build this out was downtimes on the part of your third-party providers. There\u2019s no guarantee that you would not have downtimes yourself, so how much of a difference will this make for users, all things considered?\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s really no downtime per se for us. We\u2019ve been testing these account numbers for almost a month now, and our issues have significantly reduced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the infrastructure itself, it\u2019s only PiggyVest and PocketApp that are on it. However, when we used Paystack or Flutterwave\u2019s virtual account numbers, PiggyVest and other merchants were on it, so I think they were experiencing volume issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Currently, Piggyvest and PocketApp are the only issuers of those virtual accounts, allowing us to be more efficient at this time. As we start to give out our virtual account numbers to other companies, we will have to build for scale, but we only care about ourselves right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Do customers have any choice in this? Can they choose to switch between PocketApp account numbers and other providers?<\/p>\n
No, they don\u2019t have a choice. We\u2019ve issued everyone a PocketApp account number and instructed them to switch. Very soon, we\u2019ll remove all other account numbers from the app, so you will no longer see them. <\/p>\n
However, if you have saved a beneficiary with one of these account numbers, it may still be accessible. But we told everybody to switch, and we\u2019re removing every other third-party provider on the platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n
PiggyVest has always positioned itself as a savings-first business. But with PiggyVest Business, it appears you\u2019re expanding the ways people can save or access savings-related services. Can you walk me through what that evolution looks like?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not moving beyond savings. We\u2019re helping individuals save and invest on PiggyVest. We want to help businesses save and invest using PiggyVest Business.\u00a0<\/p>\n
PiggyVest Business is an extension of PiggyVest, but for businesses. The only thing we\u2019re adding is that you can now access our wallet and treasury APIs for your business. Let me give you an example.\u00a0<\/p>\n
GoLemon does not need to build its own internal wallet. It can just integrate PiggyVest Business, which they are already doing, by the way, and then the wallet is powered by PocketApp.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What this does for them is that the wallet is regulated instantly because PocketApp is regulated by the CBN and insured by NDIC. They can also give their customers interest on the funds they keep in that wallet, powered by our treasury API.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s say you\u2019re keeping \u20a620,000 in your GoLemon for groceries every month. You can now earn interest on that \u20a620,000. In addition to using PiggyVest Business to save money and manage their day-to-day operations, GoLemon can now offer users interest on their wallet balances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For us, it\u2019s just extending that ability to manage and grow people\u2019s money through other platforms. Because that\u2019s what we fundamentally believe. The next level is embedded finance. We\u2019re not going to be able to build everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no need for us to build a GoLemon. GoLemon is already doing it, so why not just power them, give them wallets, give them a treasury?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Initially, we started with POS and everything, but we have since left the POS business<\/a>. We just want to focus on our core, and our core is assets under management. We don\u2019t really care how you collect the money from your customers; we just care what you do with the money after you\u2019ve collected it.\u00a0<\/p>\nCompetitors like Moniepoint and OPay are expanding into full personal banking offerings. How do you see PiggyVest\u2019s decision to stay focused on asset management impacting your position in the market?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not worried about the competition. I always say that the competition is my customer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, I have the attention of over six million users on the Piggytech ecosystem. My concern is how I can help these people that I already have do more with their finances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve given them PiggyVest and PocketApp. Now we\u2019re giving the same set of customers PiggyVest Business. All of those customers will start a journey with us very soon on PiggyVest Business, so we\u2019re not really worried about what any other person is doing. We\u2019re just worried about improving the value that customers get from our ecosystem.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Beyond the rollout of virtual account numbers, are there other products that you\u2019re working on that users can expect in the next few months?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yeah. So we\u2019re working on PiggyVest Kids and Salary Manager, a budgeting tool. PiggyVest Kids aims to provide use cases that enable parents to save money for their kids or save towards school fees, among other purposes.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This month, PiggyVest announced that it was launching PocketApp virtual account numbers in a move that would give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[61,60,202,80],"class_list":["post-58735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mobile","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}