Interswitch has rolled out an Online Payment Certification Program for National Youth Corp Members, first year employees, bank executives and those looking to learn more or build a career in the areas of e-payment, financial technology and e-banking.
As you all know, businesses have gone digital and e-payments is one of the fastest growing industry. Hence, there is a need for more professionals in those core areas of payment technology.
Would like to get your feedback on this.
So kindly, visit dig.ng/skillbaseng and tell me what you think?
What Interswitch is getting wrong is asking people to pay to learn it. SIMPLE.
A smarter approach is to discard your current monetization model and make the course available for free. You should be busy building an ecosystem of developers around the Interswitch API for free. it is counter-intuitive, but the upside is massive. This guys will disrupt your API and build products layered on your platform.
BTW. Isnât @iaboyejiâs Andela not paying people to learn how to code
This stuff is business for interswitch.
You donât expect them to make some bucks? How do you expect them to sustain the program?
You ever thought of the manhours spent developing the study materials?
Are you about to tell us about a better program by Voguepay?
Tell Interswitch to ditch their fees. Telling 3rd & final yr students to pay N30k for courses is counterproductive and very shortsighted.
Nigeria is really a weird country. Make some bucks, sustain program, recoup manhours utilised to develop (literally sunk costs that donât matter), are excuses to derail a golden chance to get the next generation interested in a platform. This model has been tested to death in other countries/industries, yet some smart guy is thinking peanuts.
But then itâs interswitch - the clever genuis that tell you to pay N150k to connect their payment platform. Pay them for the priviledge of them making even more money, from you.
Any ways itâs all good. It wouldnât make any difference and the prices wouldnât be dropped. Because nobody listens to good but free advice which if I was telling the new payment guys, I would say learn from the folly of interswitch. Slowly but right before our eyes morphing into Yahoo, a giant in steady decline. You should treat developers (or aspiring developers in this case) and merchants fairly, in that way, you win long term.
I applaud Interswitch for being forward minded with this initiative. It will provide a platform for the target audience to understand e-payments and technology especially as it not provided for in the Nigerian education curriculum. I hope with time they get to provide incentives to motivate the users eg.job opportunities.
I donât think Interswitch got it wrong by asking people to pay. It is only fair that an intending user invest in himself/herself. I think we need to get rid of this self entitled attitude. The company is in business to make money, they have provided a platform. If you are interested hop in, if not walk away. Please let encourage our Nigerian business.
To the substantive matter at hand, I think what @PapaOlabode is trying to pass across is that Interswitch, a billion dollar unicorn is leaving long term money on the table by focusing on a short term profits because:
The stated target market for this certification (sans the ambiguously named âbank executivesâ) have very little disposable income so the short term upside is questionable.
Practices similar to this is why their growth to a unicorn has taken the best part of 14 years when similar Western companies have become unicorns in 3 - 5 years. See Stripe - a $5bln five year old startup.
This sort of thing pushes developers away and courts competition and ultimately disruption, or being forced to buy the smaller upstart that blindsided you.
I donât know the cost of the certification program but I daresay it is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.
Boss @Uduak, we are not on the same page on this, however, @PapaOlabode got my context here.
I knew about SkillBase long before now. But I can also tell you that monetizing the programme is shortsighted.
Global brands like Google spend a lot teaching and certifying people in Analytics for freeâŚEven our own @aniediudo is carrying the Google IO gospel for âFREEâ
They are not dumbâŚThey are building an army for their ecosystem. This is the same thing that Interswitch should get right.
@PapaOlabode is prophetically right about Interswitch walking itâs way to a Yahoo-like demise if it doesnât learn to disrupt itself.
Donât forget that interswitchâs current model is partly responsible for the high cost of online payment in Nigeria. I mean the structure it runs along with the banks, NIBBS etc
Another prophecy that I will make to join boss @papaolabodeâs, is that a new order of payment will evolve (think bitcoin, stellar etc) that will completely reduce the cost of transaction (big boss @asemotaâs long-time desire). This approach will be so radically different from what Interswitch is used to that it will lose it dominance.
(That is the future that I donât want to happen to Nigeriaâs first yet-to-be listed unicorn if they get their acts right)
Self entitled attitude? I want to believe you actually believe this (and not just trolling). In anycase, read @techscorpion and @spokentwice responses which are really good. Ultimately InterSwitch benefits from more people taking the courses, so why deter people from doing so.
This sums up the anyhowness of Nigerian products and service! The sheer disdain shown to customers. Before long, someone will say âpatronise Nigerian productsâ or âbuy naija to support the Nairaâ or some other nonsense. But then we ignore the elephant in the room; the greatest harm to us is not foreign co, but that our companies are filled with people that regard customers like theyâre garbage. Utter rubbish.
People like our new friend Nikki, think this is Oyingbo market whereas customers (in this case, aspiring developers), know itâs a global village. If you treat them shabbily, they would eventually find a company/product/service would will treat them well.
Not sure why I have been tagged a troll simply because I shared my opinion that does not align with yours. I currently use the platform and I am speaking from my user experience. Is it a good initiative, yes. Can it be improved on, of course yes. I donât think the company has shown sheer disdain in this aspect to their customers. The topic I believe is âwhat do you think about the Interswitch Payment certification programâ . Itâs attitude like this that stunt âcompany/product/servicesâ from even starting as there is always an every ready team of âaspiring developersâ to tear down.
Are you saying youâre a 3rd or final year student and have paid for the programme? Well listen, if InterSwitch took N30k from you, receive wisdom and realise they donât care about you.
I care about you and say start paying attention to all the new payment startups, learn the ins & outs of their APIs, participate in hackatons etc to become an expert on how their platforms work. These folks are the future.
Short-sightedâŚI will never advise any of my merchant to use interswitch even if they can afford it. Itâs like telling you to pay for a POS. Thatâs whatâs empowering VoguePay, Paystack, others.
But I get their point, they choose their clientsâŚso all of the merchants that cant afford that to go to h*ll. To those who would fork out 30k, Good luckâŚ
It took interswitch, 10 years to expand, 12 years to launch new products and 14 yrs to become a unicorn, in the same time over 12 to 30 new payment startups have been birthed or exist currently and are eating its marketshare and have stronger brand value and acceptance.
Why not create the programme for free. Then let this guys build API and new features for your existing payment solution for free as a quid pro quo arrangement.
After getting 30,000, they come up with ideas that still eat your marketshare who then wins?, Good idea but very badly executed.
Your some people notably includes @PapaOlabode@techscorpion@Freshboi_Ekundayo and so many others who provided their insights here PLUS all those that clicked LOVE on their comments,
Do you know anyone else who will benefit the most from the programme than a developer sir?
Do you really feel there is a need to bring VP to this conversation?
This is a very interesting angle youâve introduced. So youâre saying our feedback is Oluwoleâs fault? He led us to âthinkâ and ârealiseâ that it doesnât make sense to charge fees. OP asked for feedback and if I may speak for myself, I gave it. And why do you say âleave the developer angle out of itâ? Thatâs a key component of the whole programme. So how does it make sense to leave it out? And that certification angle you mentionedâŚitâs to be tackled on a later date.
But on another note, you raised a point about VoguePay in connection to @spokentwice which to be fair, youâre not the one whoâs made a point of it. The fact is Oluwole has consistently flown the flag of his employers by speaking of the benefits of VoguePay, especially when prompted. Thereâs no need to taunt him or make him feel like itâs something to be ashamed of. A lot of people prefer other payment providers, however I personally donât think itâs heresy to let alternative payment providers speak. Itâs a free world. Or he shouldnât be allowed to speak about VoguePay?
Differing opinions is what enriches discussions. granted.
My take on this though; I still think the position taken by most inre this post is totally different from the aim of the program. which is why I originally said âdevelopersâ are not within its scope.
[quote=âspokentwice, post:17, topic:7550â]
Do you know anyone else who will benefit the most from the programme than a developer sir?
[/quote] This analogy is going to be so off, but Iâd use it anyway. MSFT launches certification program: Excel for workplace and decides to charge a fee given its ubiquity and someone says, why donât they teach it free and hope users can disrupt the app for greater things. makes sense right? However, the goal is to arm their target market with knowledge required for the workplace. Its the same thing ISW is trying to do with this. Itâs aimed at the product sales person, ePayments product managers and anyone interested in knowing about ePayments as a career path, not necessarily building an engine.
Iâm no ISW apologist, and this is purely my interpretation of presented facts (OP).
One more thing. I actually intended to goad @spokentwice with the VP comment ⌠evil grin
