By Juliet Umeh
Payments and digital commerce company, Interswitch has been named the Best Employer Brand – Sub-Saharan Africa at the LinkedIn Talent Awards. The award was announced at the LinkedIn Talent Awards ceremony held at the Microsoft offices in Johannesburg, South Africa recently.
The company says, everything it has achieved never came easy but just by the Nigerian never-give-up spirit
The LinkedIn Talent Awards recognizes companies around the world that are leading the future of work through innovation, creating inclusive workplaces, building strong employer brands and actively engaging talent communities on platforms like LinkedIn.
Interswitch was adjudged to have met all the criteria and emerged as the winner of award for its outstanding efforts to attract and retain top talent, as well as its commitment to creating a positive work culture and supporting employees’ professional development. Commenting on the award, Chief Human Resources Officer, Interswitch Nigeria, Franklin Ali, said the company was delighted to be recognized for its talent management efforts, and remains committed to sustaining a positive work environment that promotes innovation, creativity, and collaboration. He said:
“We are thrilled to be named the Best Employer Brand in Sub-Saharan Africa by LinkedIn. It is fulfilling to be able to do what we do every day here at Interswitch; for and with our employees, customers, partners and indeed our thriving community of almost 300,000 individuals on LinkedIn. “We have been empowered to showcase our brand, culture, and ethos to the wider world outside Interswitch, as part of our quest to keep inspiring Africa to greatness. Interswitch has established itself as a leading employer in the African digital payments and commerce industry, with a reputation for attracting and retaining top talent.”
Interswitch is an Africa-oriented technology-driven company focused on payments.
Overtime, it has helped create and sustain a payment ecosystem that helps commerce evolve, businesses grow and individuals thrive.
It leverages technology expertise to make businesses grow, make everyday payments with ease and integrate digital payment and get an online store.
Founded in 2002 in Nigeria, as a transaction switching and processing company with national focus, Interswitch progressively evolved to incorporate consumer financial services with the successive launches of Quickteller, a retail payments ecosystem linking merchants and billers with consumers, as well as Verve, a homegrown, EMV-certified payments card scheme.
The story behind Interswitch is very interesting. According to Wikipedia, After using an ATM for the first time in Scotland, Mitchell Elegbe, the Founder and CEO of the group, developed an idea to create electronic payment infrastructure in Nigeria while he was working on implementing SWIFT. Working at Telnet, his boss approved the transaction switch. However most players he sold to were not interested in the software for switching; this led him to creating Interswitch so as to meet his targets. With the assistance of Accenture, Elegbe and his team established the company, of which he then became CEO. In 2010 two thirds of the company was sold to a consortium led by Helios Investment Partners. In 2011 Interswitch took a 60 per cent stake in Bankom in Uganda.
In 2013 Interswitch entered into an agreement for payment processing with Discover Financial Services. In September 2014 the company acquired a majority shareholding in Paynet Group, an East-African payments provider.
In 2015 Interswitch launched a $10m investment fund for African start-ups in the payments sector. In February 2018, Interswitch unveiled its SPAK National Science Competition to promote and reward excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Nigeria.
Interswitch maintains exclusively, a wide array of interconnected datacenters in Africa and also has over 11,000 ATMs on its network, with more users in Nigeria than anywhere else.
Verve, a payment card industry is another subsidiary of Interswitch. Verve has also been launched in Kenya.
Interswitch also owns Quickteller, originally cited as a Telecommunication airtime vendor, additionally, providing payments services.
Interswitch systems deploy sophisticated inter-networking security and firewalls, as common brand innovation.
In October 2020, Quickteller launched the Qtrybe community, a community of 50 exceptional students from Nigerian tertiary institutions to serve as ambassadors of Quickteller and Interswitch on their campuses
