A tech expert has accused telecoms companies in Nigeria of hoarding essential data that could ease provision of electronic payment services in the West African nation.

Valentine Obi, chief executive officer of eTranzact says telecoms companies in Nigeria are essentially holding onto large volumes of data that the e-payment sector could use to make the sector easier.

eTranzact is one of Nigeria’s leading electronic payment companies.

And speaking in Lagos, Nigeria last week Obi said the telecoms companies are only using the data they have for their personal purposes.

“MTN and other networks are gathering real-time location information about their subscribers. We can use this to overcome the KYC (know your customer) challenge that we have in payment.

“The data the networks have could be used to confirm the addresses customers give, we can also use such to easily track them,” Obi said.

Obi explained that the telecoms companies have sufficient data to transform and enhance the cashless society in Nigeria and can generally be deployed to improve the generality of the market.

“They have data that no one is using. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) should encourage the telcos to share these data with us because the telcos often say the information we need are highly regulated because they are very sensitive and as such they are not allowed to share them,” he said.