RFP News

Published on Oct 05, 2010

The Cross River State is the first Nigerian state to implement biometric technology and combine authentication and payment in a state-wide ‘Smartcity’ card.

The Smartcity card will be used by the citizens for personal identification in public services such as tax declaration, healthcare, social benefits and pension, as well as enabling commercial services such as e-payments.

The program, called the SmartGov Initiative, allows the Cross River State to automate government services, create tracability and transparency of their systems and grow revenue. The citizens will experience easy and convenient access to a number of services, which will make processes such as receiving money for various social services more efficient. The solution is built on Interswitch’s Paydirect solution; an e-payment solution which is currently operational is 26 of Nigeria’s 36 states.

The Cross River Governor, Liyel Imoke, states that “One of the advantages of e-payment is to create efficiency within the public sector while providing good service delivery to the people.”

Mitchell Elegbe, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of InterSwitch, notes that Cross River is the first state in Nigeria to fully deploy SmartGov. “With this project, Cross River State and InterSwitch are writing history”.

Thomas Marschall, CEO at Precise Biometrics, elaborates: The SmartGov Initiative is a highly interesting approach and a true forerunner to a development we expect to see in a number of countries. Payments as well as other transactions and services that require identification of an individual are made possible in a quick and easy way thanks to biometrics. This is an important expansion of the ID market that we expect will increase our business opportunities in this field. It is also very pleasing that our partnership with Interswitch is already starting to generate projects and income for both companies.

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