Senior executives from McKinsey and Company, Interswitch, Zest Payments, and other ecosystem leaders convened at the recent Condia’s inaugural, ‘The Borderless Experience.’

The participants had conversations around issues facing African businesses as they scale past their home markets.

Convened by founder of Condia, Benjamin Dada, the event drew founders, bankers, and policy figures into a day of conversation about what it actually takes to grow across borders rather than simply reach them.

A partner at McKinsey and Company, Ricky Asemota, delivered the keynote address, arguing that the real test facing fast-growing companies is not whether they can generate new ideas but if they can hold onto the ones they already have.

She stated, ‘the capability that is proportionately valuable is not the ability to create new ideas, it’s going to be the ability to absorb them.’

Asemota also disclosed a trend she has observed across client work in Africa and the Gulf region, where growth strategies frequently outpace the internal systems meant to sustain them.

There was also a fireside conversation between Divisional Chief Executive Officer of Interswitch’s Payment Processing and Switching business Akeem Lawal and Chief Executive Officer of Zest Payments Kemi Manuel.

Speaking further, Lawal said an estimated $100 billion in cross-border payments moved out of the country in the past year through channels with no licence attached to any of it.

He added, ‘the problem today that I see, and that Interswitch is trying to solve, is that we now need to take the sophistication we have created in Nigeria and expand it outside of Nigeria,” Lawal said, framing the figure as evidence of unmet demand rather than a cautionary statistic.’

Manuel however observed the biggest challenge in the continent is regulation, pointing to different licencing requirements a single fintech model can face from one African market to the next.

She added there is need for conversations among regulators about a shared licence that could eventually operate across several countries at once.

To Dada, ‘I realised I didn’t want to build a startup. I wanted to build a product that solves the problem. A lot of people have talked to me about building a startup but can’t seem to find licences or banking partners, who to hire, or answers to some of the real-world challenges. Those are the conversations we want to create room for.’

Specifically, The Borderless Experience is positioned as the first in a series of Condia gatherings aimed at giving founders and operators direct access to the people building the financial infrastructure they depend on, rather than conference programming built around pitch competitions or general networking.

Condia is a media and events platform covering technology and business across the country and wider African market.