Sparkle, a Nigerian digital platform providing financial, lifestyle, and business support services has stated that it aims to grow its customer base from over 25,000 to 100,000 before the end of 2021.
Also, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Uzoma Dozie, further revealed in a media briefing over the weekend that his firm would soon kick-start loan services by the beginning of September.
The fintech offers an array of services from flexible payments and savings to analytics via its Android and iOS mobile application.
Sparkle allows users to track daily, weekly, and monthly spending patterns, with detailed breakdown by category.
One of its features, Sparkle Stash, is PiggyVest-esque as it lets users save towards specific goals. Users can make purchases online and in-person with both Sparkle physical and virtual cards.
They can also make split payments, make utilities and bill payments, and there is SparklePay which lets users send money to people without knowing their account numbers.
Dozie explained that Sparkle, which has been in operations for over a year, was launched to provide banking services digitally to Nigerians adding that it is focusing on two segments; individuals and small businesses.
He said: “We are different from other competitors with our solution and our leadership team which has the working experience of operating in a traditional bank as well as partnerships with Visa, Microsoft, Google and PwC.
“We want to make digital banking completely simple from how transactions are done, provide banking services to small businesses, help them save as well as help them to be compliant with tax laws in Nigeria and simply put, we are using this as a form of transforming transactions into better solutions.
“So, we took the decision that we are not only going to build a solution but tie it around the customer and secondly it was also important that we partner with people to establish trust. The fact that we also have a banking license means that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has deemed us trustworthy to carry out these services,” he said.
Dozie revealed that the firm has over 25,000 customers and believes that due to the strategic partnerships it has, the customer base segment could hit six figures before the end of the year.
“I think we have done fantastically well and like a year ago, nobody knew us, but today, we are mentioned as one of the available digital banks.
“Sparkle will start its loan services by the beginning of September but we could have started earlier but then we will want to build something that allows us to lend differently to people and we want to lend at a competitive price and not just the typical ones in banks,” he added.