By Nikita Geldenhuys

The Barclays Accelerator programme is looking for the next M-Pesa or PayPal-like innovation. Do you expect any entries to this round of the Barclays Accelerator programme to make use of social media platforms as part of their fintech innovations?

Globally, we’ve seen social media is transforming banking significantly – from access to credit or helping new customers open a bank account to being used for growth hacking and general targeted distribution. Whilst we can’t predict which start-ups will enter, a growing number of start-ups are using social media platforms in the fintech landscape.

This has been validated via us seeing more companies, globally, which have technologies integrated to or using social media, join or apply for our programme.

Social Lender, a start-up using social media for alternative credit scoring, was one of the selected 10 start-ups in our last cohort of the RISE Cape Town Accelerator.

The global population’s use of social media is slowly growing, predicted to be up by 9% in 2016, when compared to last year. What role do you think social media can play in the global fintech sector?

We’re only at the brink of seeing how social media will play in the fintech space. In 2017, there will be 2.55 billion users of social media networks and this number will continue to grow. Across the world, we’re seeing social media data being used in a variety of ways including understanding consumer behaviour and preferences, delivering personalisation in the moment, or offering more accurate credit scoring, or P2P payments with the use of services like Venmo.

Other areas in which we are seeing the use of social media platforms in the fintech landscape is online payments for products, transfers via Facebook and Twitter (in the form of ChatBanking Absa launched earlier this year), and using social media channels to answer simple FAQ queries. Bankbot, launched by Absa earlier this year, is an example.

Statista estimated the number of social network users in the Middle East and Africa region to grow from 143.3 million in 2012 to 350.5 million in 2018. Do you think social media has a role to play in fintech innovations for the African continent?

Yes, social media is no longer a place where people simply connect and communicate but it is a core part of people’s lives, and increasingly provides a broad range of services directly, including financial services.

One example is Social Lender in Nigeria. It gives millennial customers access to credit otherwise not possible on their current credit history.

What challenges do you think innovators face when developing financial solutions and fintech that incorporate social media?

There are many challenges in creating fintech solutions and as a new emerging area for banks I think the most pertinent challenges to social media integrated technologies would be navigating data privacy and compliance issues.

What do you think the future of fintech in Africa will look like, especially considering the rapid adoption of mobile technology and the potential impact of current projects that aim to bring internet access to more people on the continent?

What we’re beginning to see is the integration of banking into other apps, for example messaging apps such as Facebook and Twitter which have high levels of penetration and engagement on mobile. At the same time the adoption of mobile technologies has led to banks having access to growing amounts of data on customers, and this will help us deliver more personalised products to our customers.

Get more information on the Barclays Accelerator programme here or connect with Hadjibashi on Twitter.

Read here how Barclays Africa is managing the disruption that digital has brought to the banking environment.