Across jurisdictions, our approach is simple: build to the highest standard and apply it everywhere- Ajanah

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Read History Go to My Account Log Out Enhanced by Google Interview Across jurisdictions, our approach is simple: build to the highest standard and apply it everywhere- Ajanah In an exclusive interview with BusinessDay, marking Nigeria’s 66th Independence, Chukwuemeka Ajanah, Founder & Group CEO of ParkFirst Group, discusses

Listen to this article Share In an exclusive interview with BusinessDay, marking Nigeria’s 66th Independence, Chukwuemeka Ajanah, Founder & Group CEO of ParkFirst Group, discusses how the global payment institution balances high-speed cross-border transactions with stringent multi-jurisdictional compliance across Canada, the UK, and Nigeria, demonstrating why robust regulatory safeguards are not a bottleneck, but the ultimate product itself. Excerpts:

As Nigeria marks another milestone, the national economic imperative has shifted from post-independence commodity dependency to digital economy leadership. How is Theparkpay Technologies positioning its payment infrastructure to drive Nigeria’s ‘next economy’ over the next decade?

Sixty-six years on, the question for Nigeria is no longer whether it can produce value. It is whether that value can move. Our entrepreneurs, exporters and digital businesses are already competing for global customers. What too often holds them back is the infrastructure that sits between a Nigerian business and the money it has earned or needs to pay.

Theparkpay is positioning itself as that infrastructure. We are building a licensed, multi-jurisdiction payment platform that lets a Nigerian business send, receive, hold and convert across currencies as easily as it transacts in Naira. That means settlement through local rails in destination markets rather than chains of correspondent banks, transparent pricing that a business can plan around, and regulatory standing in the markets where our clients trade.

Over the next decade, the next economy will be defined less by what Nigeria extracts and more by what it exports: services, software, creative content, processed goods and talent. Every one of those depends on a payment system that works across borders. Our role is to make sure that when a Nigerian company wins an international customer, getting paid is the easy part. We also intend to grow with the businesses we serve.

The freelancer receiving her first dollar invoice today is the agency paying staff in three countries tomorrow. We are building the platform to carry that journey, from a single wallet to full corporate treasury, so that Nigerian businesses never outgrow the infrastructure beneath them.

One of the biggest bottlenecks for Nigerian enterprises and SMEs trading globally is foreign exchange transparency and cross-border settlement speeds. How is Theparkpay tackling liquidity constraints and enabling frictionless transactions across key trade corridors like Africa, Europe, and Asia?

Transparency and speed are two sides of the same problem. When a business cannot see the rate it will get, or know when its supplier will be paid, it builds in buffers: extra cash, extra inventory, extra margin. Those buffers are the hidden tax on Nigerian trade, and removing them is where we focus. On liquidity, we aggregate supply from multiple licensed sources rather than relying on a single channel. That gives our clients access to rates close to the wholesale market and greater depth when demand spikes. On transparency, the rate and the fee are shown before a business commits, and the amount the beneficiary receives is the amount agreed. There are no deductions discovered after the fact.

On speed, we settle through local payment rails at the receiving end wherever we can. A payment to a supplier in Guangzhou, a partner in London or a distributor in Accra should not pass through two or three intermediary banks, each adding a fee and a day. By connecting directly into the destination market, we move settlement from days to hours and, in many corridors, to minutes. Each corridor is different. Asia is primarily about sourcing, so our focus is reliable, fast supplier payments. Europe is about both trade and receiving foreign income. Across Africa, it is about building the regional connectivity that AfCFTA promises, but payment infrastructure has not yet delivered. We are building for all three, deliberately and corridor by corridor.

Theparkpay Technologies provides corporate treasury, bulk payouts, and API solutions for sectors ranging from FMCG and tech distribution to agriculture. How are these digital payment integrations helping enterprise businesses optimise working capital and reduce operational friction?

For an enterprise, working capital is trapped in three places: money in transit, money converted at the wrong time, and money tied up in manual processes. Our enterprise tools are designed to release it from all three. Corporate treasury starts with visibility. A distributor with suppliers in Asia, customers across West Africa and costs in Naira needs a single view of its balances across currencies. Our platform gives finance teams that view, the ability to hold receipts in the currency they were earned, and the discretion to convert when the rate is right rather than when a bank dictates. Every conversion avoided is value preserved.

Bulk payouts address the operational side. An agricultural business paying hundreds of outgrowers, or an FMCG company settling a network of distributors, should not be processing payments one by one. Batch payments with clear reconciliation reduce errors, cut staff hours and shorten the time between an approved invoice and a paid supplier. Our APIs take this a step further by embedding payments directly into a client’s own systems. When payments are triggered from the ERP or order platform a business already uses, there is no re-keying, no spreadsheet hand-offs and far less room for delay. For a tech distributor, that can mean paying an overseas supplier the moment stock is confirmed, and negotiating better terms because of it. The result is less idle cash, faster cycles and finance teams that spend their time managing the business rather than chasing payments.

Small and medium enterprises remain the backbone of Nigeria’s economy. What specific localized tools or low-friction APIs is Theparkpay Technologies offering to help informal businesses transition smoothly into the formal digital financial ecosystem?

Most informal businesses are not informal by choice. They are informal because the formal system has been too slow, too expensive or too complicated to be worth the effort. If we want them to formalise, the formal route has to be the easier one. That is the principle behind how we build for SMEs. It starts with onboarding. Our Know Your Business process is thorough, as it must be, but it is designed to be completed digitally and without repeated trips or paperwork. Once a business is verified, it can transact without facing the same questions every time it makes a payment.

The tools themselves are built for how small businesses actually operate. Our mobile application lets a trader or small importer send, receive, hold and spend across multiple currencies from a phone. Receiving accounts in major currencies give an SME the same local bank details that an international customer would expect from a business in their own country. Transparent pricing means a small business sees exactly what a payment will cost before it commits.

For SMEs that are growing, our APIs allow payments to be built into the tools they already use, whether that is an online storefront, an invoicing platform or a simple order system, without needing a large technical team. The payoff for formalising is real. A business with a verifiable payment history can access better supplier terms, attract international buyers and build the track record that lenders look for. Our job is to make that first step into the formal system feel less like compliance and more like opportunity.

Reinventing finance requires strong synergy between legacy financial institutions and modern fintechs. How does Theparkpay Technologies collaborate with traditional commercial banks and global payment networks to enhance system reliability and overall market trust?

We do not see banks as competitors. They are the foundation the entire payment system rests on, and the most durable fintechs will be those that make that foundation work better rather than try to route around it. Commercial banks bring balance sheets, deposit relationships, domestic clearing and decades of institutional trust. Fintechs bring speed, product design, and the ability to serve customers banks find uneconomic to reach one by one. The partnership works when each side does what it does best. For Theparkpay, that means working with banks for account infrastructure, safeguarding of client funds and local settlement, while we deliver the cross-border connectivity and customer experience on top. With global payment networks and liquidity providers, the relationship is built on regulatory standing.

Our licensing, including our registration as a Payment Service Provider in Canada, means we come to these partners as a regulated counterparty rather than a new name asking for access. That changes the conversation and the terms on which corridors open. Trust in both directions is earned through discipline. Partners need to know that our controls on anti-money laundering, sanctions and client fund safeguarding meet their standards. Clients need to know that their payments will arrive, every time. We invest in both because reliability is the only real currency in cross-border payments. Ultimately, market trust is cumulative. Every transaction settled cleanly by a licensed Nigerian institution strengthens the case for the whole ecosystem, banks and fintechs alike.

Navigating multi-jurisdictional compliance, anti-money laundering regulations, and money services business licensing is complex. How does Theparkpay Technologies balance rapid digital innovation with strict global compliance standards to keep cross-border transactions safe?

We do not treat compliance as the brake on innovation. It is what keeps the road open. A payment institution that moves fast but falls short on compliance will not stay fast for long, because its banking partners and regulators will close its corridors. In cross-border payments, compliance is the product. The balance comes from where compliance sits in the process. We invest heavily at onboarding, with thorough Know Your Customer and Know Your Business verification, so that once a client is on the platform, their transactions can move without repeated manual checks. Transaction monitoring and sanctions screening are automated and run in real time, so a clean payment is not held up waiting for a review that could have happened instantly.

Where a transaction does need a closer look, we resolve it quickly and explain why. A client who understands the question is a client who trusts the answer, and that transparency is part of what makes compliance feel less like friction.

Across jurisdictions, our approach is simple: build to the highest standard and apply it everywhere. Regulators in Canada, the United Kingdom and Nigeria differ in detail, but they share the same core expectations on client fund safeguarding, anti-money laundering controls and governance. Designing to the most demanding of them means we are not maintaining different rulebooks for different markets.

Innovation then happens inside that framework. New products are designed with compliance at the table from day one, not added at the end. That is slower at the start, and much faster over time.

Looking closely at the theme of a ‘Digital Nation,’ what role will artificial intelligence, smart settlement routing, and automated treasury engines play in Theparkpay Technologies’ upcoming product roadmap?

A digital nation is not one where every transaction is online. It is one where the systems behind those transactions are intelligent enough to make the right decision without a person having to intervene. That is where we see artificial intelligence and automation playing their most important role in our roadmap. Smart settlement routing is the clearest example. For any given payment, there are usually several ways to get money from origin to destination, each with a different cost, speed and liquidity profile at that moment. Choosing the best route manually is slow and inconsistent. A routing engine that evaluates those options in real time can deliver the fastest, most cost-effective path for every transaction, and pass those gains directly to the client.

Automated treasury is the natural next step. Businesses should be able to set rules for how they manage currency: when to convert, what balance to hold in each currency, when to pay which supplier. The platform then executes those rules consistently, so treasury discipline that once required a dedicated team becomes available to a growing SME. Artificial intelligence also strengthens our compliance and fraud controls. Models that learn normal transaction patterns can flag genuine risk faster and with fewer false alarms, which keeps legitimate payments moving and bad actors out. The principle across all of this is the same. Technology should remove friction the client can see and manage risk the client should never have to think about. That is the standard we are building our roadmap to.

If you were to project the state of Nigerian finance 10 years from today, what key policy or technological shifts must happen for Nigeria to achieve a fully integrated, cashless cross-border trade economy and what legacy does Theparkpay Technologies hope to leave in that story?

Ten years from now, I would like a Nigerian business to be able to sell to a buyer in Nairobi, Toronto or Shanghai and be paid in its preferred currency, in minutes, at a transparent price, without thinking twice. The pieces exist today. What is needed is to connect them and sustain the reforms that make them trustworthy. Three policy shifts matter most.

First, a transparent and liquid foreign exchange market. The reforms of recent years have moved in the right direction, and sustaining them will do more for Nigerian Competitiveness than any single incentive.

Second, regulatory clarity and consistency for licensed payment institutions, so compliant operators can invest with confidence and the Nigerian licence is recognised abroad as a mark of quality.

Third, active engagement with international regulators to establish Nigeria as a trusted jurisdiction, opening corridors that are closed today by perception rather than fact.

On technology, the shift is towards interoperability: domestic and regional payment systems that connect cleanly to one another, digital identity that makes onboarding seamless, and settlement infrastructure that makes cross-border payments as ordinary as local ones. AfCFTA will only be as strong as the payment rails beneath it.

As for legacy, we would like Theparkpay to be remembered as the infrastructure that helped Nigerian businesses be dealt with on the merits of their products rather than the reputation of their payment environment. If a generation of Nigerian exporters, founders and freelancers can take global commerce for granted, we will have done our part.