VoguePay launches multi-currency payment platform, unfolds plans to become digital bank

VoguePay.com, a leading online payment aggregator in Nigeria, has launched its new platform (VoguePay 3.0) with focus on empowering businesses to improve their revenue collections. The new platform simplifies the way that medium and small scale businesses can send and receive payment from local and international customers as they can now sell to global audience.

At the press briefings held at its Lagos office, the CEO of VoguePay, Michael Femi Simeon announced that the new platform allows merchants to accept payment in US Dollars, Euro, GBP, Ghanaian Cedis, Kenyan Shillings, South African Rands and bitcoin payments. This cross-currency payment gateway enables VoguePay to offer local businesses the capacity to facilitate cross-border transactions easily and securely in order to improve their revenues. Michael noted that over the years, the company has grown to become the fastest growing fintech company in West Africa that has not raised external funding while supporting more than 60,000 merchants across North Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Businesses using VoguePay can now enjoy competitive transaction fees while receiving payments from their customers through multiple channels like cash, card payment, direct bank transfers, QR codes and bitcoin. The new platform also ensures improved ecommerce transaction success rates and offer more business support tools. Leke Ojikutu, co-founder and Chief technology officer noted that existing VoguePay users don’t need to do anything as their account will be migrated to the new platform. He noted that security and safety of financial transactions are now improved 3 times, even as the company seeks to comply with PCI DSS certification which is a mark of trust by industry standards.

In his remarks, Geoffrey Weli-Wosu, director of marketing and legal added that one of the news changes that will start reflecting in the new VoguePay 3.0 platform is its improved fund maturity process. He noted that this will enable merchants withdraw their funds faster. For Naira transactions, the maturity period has been reviewed to 24 hours, otherwise known as T+1. while transactions in currencies like US Dollars, Euro, GBP, Ghanaian Cedis, Kenyan Shillings and South African Rands will require 5 days (T+5). Merchants can configure auto-withdrawal send money directly to their bank account instantly, upon maturity.

Eyes on becoming digital bank

VoguePay’s chief operations officer of VoguePay, Quam Ojikutu added that in additional to allowing merchants to receive payment from anyone globally, VoguePay has the right partnerships to onboard merchants from different countries and remit payments to them in their preferred currencies like euro, dollar, rands, cedi, naira and bitcoin depending on the country they opened their account. He further added that the launch of the new platform is part of an overall strategy to launch Africa’s first blockchain-powered digital bank by Q2, 2018.

He noted that with the digital bank, VoguePay infrastructure will be suited to serve the needs of the diasporas. Mohammed Ibrahim Jega, the company’s head of business development, Africa also hinted that the company has secured a slot as one of the first Nigerian companies to join the international acceleration programme of one of Silicon Valley’s leading accelerators that have the likes of PayPal, DropBox and LendingCo in its community.