3Line Card management company Ltd was set up three years ago to bridge the gap in service delivery. In this exclusive chat with BusinessDay, the managing director of the company, Ademola Ade Ojo, explains the strategies the company has adopted in re-inventing card business in Nigeria.

The continuing improvement in the investment climate and the gradual upgrade of infrastructure backbone is creating investment opportunities particularly in the ICT sector. As such, there is an increased demand to reduce inefficiencies and boost productivity in the areas such as governance, payments and data collection as well as storage.

In order to take advantage of emerging business opportunities in e-business, 3 line Card management Limited, a company set up in 2005 to design, operate and market world class card management, electronics payment and related infrastructure recently launched a hybrid 72K card in the country. The features of the card is exceptional and the first in the country.

The company is a Card Management Company based in Lagos Nigeria but with a global view. It is all about providing eSolutions that make a difference to every day life as eBusiness is dynamic and vibrant so the solutions the company offers are designed to fit into the fast , varied , mobile lives we lead in this country.

According to Ade Ojo the managing director and chief executive officer, the company’s philosophy is to challenge the status quo, seeing how far the company could push the boundaries of technology to give us more. We want to see possibilities being made real.

The company designs, builds, operates and markets world class card management, electronic payments (e payments) and related infrastructure and services; it also focuses on three key areas ePayment, eData and eIdentity. Our eServices rely on the company’s card platform which is smart card based and licensed to operate in Nigeria under the Freedom Card brand name.

Our card platform is multi-payment, multi-functional and multi channel enabling, for the first time in Nigeria, a card which has both online and offline capabilities as standard features, this means that by supporting your card with our platform, you and your customers can conduct more transactions of different types with one card than has never been possible before now in Nigeria.
In combination with an in house card management system and a terminal Management System, our Technology can manage the entire lifecycle of your card from procurement to fulfillment and implements online & offline debit and e Purse transactions.

Uniqueness of its products
For the card holder, Freedom card offers a wide range of very robust, very convenient features that come as standard functionalities in all. Any of these features can be activated on request for a card issuer. 

It is also a high capacity 72K cards that is hybrid in nature, having both the chip and magnetic stripe technology to enable both online and offline transactions. Unlike other products in the market, the multipurpose Freedom card could also be used as an identity and ePayment card in the country.

The company’s card management system is Euro, MasterCard and Visa (EMV2) compliant working on the VisaSmart Debit Credit application system (VSDC+), Java based technology with an end to end solution that allows financial and non-financial institutions offer electronic revenue collection, payroll processing and data capturing.

The company says its schemes meet all standard regulatory requirements such as Know –Your-Customers KYC guidelines. It is also compliant with all local and international regulations as well as complies with best practices, risk and security management frameworks. With Freedom Card connectivity issues are a thing of the past since the cards have online and offline capabilities, because the card comes with both a chip and the more common magstripe feature, enabling the card holder to load money on the chip for offline spending or to go online and access from an account, now the card holders can the unique convenience of carrying only one card as both an electronic purse and a debit card.
 
As well as taking cards from the ATM, Freedom Card allows you to collect cash from a merchant outlet after purchase is made or even without making any purchase at all. The card holder has more avenues through which to access his funds as now every point of contact offers the possibility for cash dispensing.

Synergy with Lagos state government
The versatility of our cards facilitated our partnership with the Lagos state government for the automation of its licensing process.

What we have is closed to what the licensing authority does. We have a partnership in the AutoReg project. You know that in the past people will have to go to the local government licensing offices for the registration of their cars,The system then breed touts and there were all kinds of irregularities,but now the AutoReg project makes things much easier.

Apart from the assurance that the states money is safe, AutoReg Freedom Card has made accurate data storage possible, we can now tell you the number of vehicles on Lagos roads, the make and colour of the cars ,chasis number e.t.c.

These are the advantages of the project. Again, what they were doing was that they were using scratch cards. You go to the bank you pay then they issue you your documents. That was before we came on board,but now AutoReg has gone smart and has brought innovations that have never been seen in the country before.

As I said, the company’s cards are acceptable at a wide variety of merchant outlets for various uses as well as via POS, ATMs, the Web and Mobile Phones. 3Line is continuously looking forward by developing its technology and increasing its reach in the hope of bringing even greater features and convenience to its clients over time.
ePayment solutions offered to government include Organized Transport Payment systems, Duties and Taxes Payment systems.

Another important quality of the card is that with the dearth of Data and information in Nigeria, 3 Line is positioned to offer Data Capture Solutions enabling the automated capture of information/ records for educational institutions, the Government and corporate entities. Freedom cards can also be used as identity cards for Higher institutions that need to place key information on a card for later analysis; the mobility and quick down load capabilities built into its technology offer fast, accurate and simple way to keep track of staff, customers or students, as high security features are built into the data-capture cards to protect privacy and deter fraud.

Future of Card Business in Nigeria
Demographic figure shows that there are about 55 million Nigerians within the working group. These include those in the formal and informal sectors of the economy. If all these people have cards and they are all doing about N8 000 minimum, simple arithmetic shows that they will be making about N165 billion annually and this is just in transaction fees alone. Then if you consider the cost of the cards which is put at about N200 and other non financial transactions you will discover that the future of the business if very bright. My estimate is that the market is worth about N250 billion and still counting.