Sparkle, a Nigerian digital platform providing financial, lifestyle and business support services to Nigerians around the world, launches today.
The digital platform was founded by the former CEO of Diamond Bank, Uzoma Dozie in August 2019.
As the CEO of Diamond Bank, Dozie began making moves into the tech scene since 2015. But from being an angel investor to hosting his online TV show, Tech Turks and pioneering tech event, TechFest, Sparkle seems to be Dozie's main play to make a name for himself in Nigeria's tech space.
However, since leaving the commercial bank after its merger with Access Bank and announcing Sparkle, the project had been in the product development stage for almost a year.
With its launch, it will now offer 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.
Sparkle describes itself as a lifestyle and financial platform which is evident in its other features. 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's SparklePay which let users send money to people without knowing their account numbers.
Before today's launch, Sparkle secured a banking license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to offer financial services.
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It also joined Open Banking Nigeria, an initiative created as non-partisan and non-financial API standards for Nigerian financial services.
Asides this, Sparkle has secured partnerships with payments giant, VISA; tech multinational, Microsoft; and auditing and accounting giant, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
According to Dozie, the partnerships will provide expertise in APIs, cloud computing, data science, machine learning, tax and financial advisory services for the company.
On another note, Sparkle will be going up against other fintech platforms in Nigeria like PiggyVest, Kuda, REACH. Also, there’s Carbon, the fintech startup founded by two other Dozie brothers -- Chijioke and Ngozi.
It will be interesting to see how the newly-launched platform holds up against these already established players.
Also Read: The Financial Knight: Uzoma Dozie’s journey from traditional to digital banking [Interview]
