Traditional Banking Is Getting Old; Heard Of Sykabank?
When we think of money, we think of two things; security and convenience. However, over the period, traditional banking has got individuals rethinking the need to save in that method because it simply isn’t convenient anymore. There is the thing with slow processes, long queues, faulty ATMs, to mention a few. Due to these setbacks, neobanks have become popular players in this era. Essentially neobanks are fintech institutions that are not saddled by the traditional banking methods. Simply put, they operate digitally or virtually outside physical bank branches or systems. Faced with the same inconvenient reasons, a Ghanaian software developer decided to set up a Neobank firm.
Called Nana Kwame Asare-Obuobi, the Software Engineer and co-founder of Sykabank attended the Ghana Technology university college where he studied marketing. The general expectation would be for the innovator to achieve significant strides in the marketing world, but his personal experience with traditional banking influenced the creation of Sykabank.
Sykabank is a neobanking platform that makes it easy to access banking services conveniently. The digital platform gives users the flexibility to own and build their financial freedom with their services. Users get personalised customer services and payment transactions at low costs.
For its functionality, the platform has the “Saving” option that allows users to create savings goals for themselves. Sykabank also has the “Split bills” feature to enable friends to split their bills when they go out to eat or have fun. Additionally, the platform has an AI credit scoring feature that uses customers’ transactional history to determine credit worthiness to grant them loans and other credit facilities.
“I tried creating a bank account for my company, and it took more than two weeks to get it done because my passport was the only ID I had at the time, and it had expired. They needed one that was up to date. It was a cumbersome and stressful process for me. In the end, I had to get my SSNIT ID to submit to have the account created. Another stressful moment is the long queue and long waiting hours. I wanted a way to be able to have done most of my banking transactions conveniently.”
“I think there has been a lot of innovation in various areas or sectors in this country including the financial industry but what most of our traditional banks have failed to do is catering for low income earners mostly because of accessibility and financial viability of those customer segments. Banks can not create branches in every district in Ghana, so I had done lots of research to uncover the gaps within the industry and hence the desire to solve them,” the co-founder told DT Africa.
“A new way of banking is coming from Syka; we are making it easy for people to get much control of their finances and making banking accessible to almost everyone.”
The company’s mobile app is still in pipeline and Nana Kwame looks to launch it hopefully before the end of March. This development opens doors for individuals to join the companies website live and be part of a waitlist. This guarantees that they will be part of the first group to enjoy the Syka App privileges.
A user has to scan their Ghana card and upload the file and a photo to use the app. According to the co-founder will make it easier to determine the location of the individual.
“Our current plans mostly hover around completing our regulatory requirements, completing our pre-seed funding round and getting to market ASAP. We are also looking to partner various financial companies, primarily insurance companies and investment houses, and other banks. We are raising our pre-seed round and expect to close the round very soon,” Nana Kwame mentioned, touching on their current plans.
In its production stage, Sykabank has more than 800 sign-ups in the first two months and hopes to launch soon.
