Lagos State Government has commenced the migration of its automatic vehicle registration management, known as AutoReg to Freedom Card payment platform, which is managed by 3Line Card Management Limited.
The migration followed the strategic partnership between 3Line Card Management and Courteville Investment Limited, owners of the AutoReg trademark. The scheme which is hitherto operated on scratch card platform has now been moved to a more robust smart card platform capable of carrying out other financial transactions immediately and in the nearest future.
The new platform is a smart card that contains a memory chip and can perform the functions of a debit card, credit card, prepaid card and other future transactions such as payment for gasoline and payment for lottery.
Under the new scheme, vehicle owners in the state are required to register their vehicles by visiting registration centres, which are the branches of banks involved in the scheme. Oceanic Bank is the first bank in the country that issued the Freedom card and AutoReg co-branded cards to vehicle owners.
At the media launch of the new platform last weekend, Dr. Cecilia Ibru, Chief Executive Officer of Oceanic Bank said the bank was proud to be associated with the project, saying, "It is part of our commitment to co-create value in e-governance with the Lagos State government."
According to her, Oceanic Bank has consistently been the lead bank amongst other banks involved in the AutoReg scheme. "We are devising more innovative ways and methods for vehicles owners to derive maximum benefits from the upgraded scheme."
While explaining the multi-functionalities of the AutoReg new platform, Dr. Ibru said that the traditional vehicle owners' details would be electronically stored in the cards for the purposes of verification by government agencies.
In addition, the card can be used as a debit card or electronic purse for existing customers of the bank, and electronic purse for non-customers that do not operate any bank account. "This is done through the creation of a virtual account for such customers. Money is stored electronically on the card, which can be used on ATMs; point of sale (PoS) terminals and on the web."
In his remarks, Bola Akindele, Chief Executive Officer of Courteville, the owner of AutoReg trademark disclosed that the scheme, which commenced one year ago, has increased the state's revenue generation by 300 percent and created a million records of vehicle owners in the state. Akindele said the scheme has also eliminated problems hitherto associated with obtaining vehicle licenses such as touting, corruption and delay associated with manual vehicle registration. "Now, it takes only five minute to capture a registration process through the AutoReg scheme. It is a home-grown scheme and the first of its kind in the world."
Akindele said his company decided to work with 3Line Card Management in order to move the AutoReg scheme to the next level and eliminate all others limitation associated with the scratch cards platform. "We choose 3Line Card because out of all the card companies that approached us, 3Line Card has the best infrastructure that can handle all our requirements".
According to him, with a 72k chip, the highest data storage capacity in the market, AutoReg Freedom cards capacity is limitless. "We envisioned that in the future, vehicle owners would be able to use their AutoReg Freedom Card for payment services such as buying goods at supermarkets, payment for tolls on Lagos roads, payment for fuel at filling stations across the state."
Demola Ade-Ojo, promoter and managing director of 3Line Card Management said the AutoReg Freedom card is a multi-application as well as multi-platform compliant. "AutoReg Freedom card would be accepted on all payment platforms in the country. We are working with VISA and InterSwitch in this regards." He said with this kind of innovations, Nigeria could begin to take her natural position among nations that have eliminated waste, corruption and bureaucracy using cutting edge technologies.
