What Happened to Abokifx: The Rise and Fall of a Popular Forex Trading Platform
What Happened to Abokifx: The Rise and Fall of a Popular Forex Trading Platform
Abokifx was one of the most popular naira forex information platforms in Nigeria. They were established in 2011 and within just a few years they had become the largest online forex platform for Nigerians, with over 100 thousand visitors a month.
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Section 1: The Rise of Abokifx
Early 2011, it was a big headache to buy and sell Naira on the naira forex market. The few Forex platforms that were around were either unreliable or had poor features. Some had no real-time rate for individuals to trade and make deposits with. These issues were quite unfortunate as a nation that depended on its currency for trade and commerce.
To try and address this problem, Abokifx was launched. Abokifx is actually an acronym for a recent word-mash of Abaikifx, which is the coastal town where they are based. They started off as a print magazine that used to be available at the Aba dock.
The Fall of Abokifx
Sadly, Abokifx had its ups and downs. Over the years, they’ve gone through a lot of change. From a forex information platform to a Forex Brokerage website, the transition wasn’t always smooth.
This makes the fall of Abokifx more sad, and worth remembering, considering how high they once were. It’s worth taking a look back, to look at the end of a great deal in naira forex trading.
Investigative Journalism vs Passive Marketing
The first, and most obvious, change Abokifx had to go through was transitioning from a great deal of investigative journalism to a more passive marketing and online gaming website. This was necessary, to meet the demands of investors and traders who were interested in using the platform as more of a trading resource, rather than a forum for active discussions.
Why did Abokifx collapse?
The surprising thing is that Abokifx didn’t collapse because they didn’t have any exciting news. It was actually something very easy to avoid – many of the Nigerian customers simply chose not to upgrade to their new site.
They simply didn’t have time to do so as they were busy trading in forex, so they left their old account (they had an option to upgrade or not), and became new clients of their competitors.
And as we will explain below, the main reason for Abokifx collapse was…
This might be shocking, but according to the founder of the platform, one of the largest payment processors in Nigeria did not pay Abokifx. It’s called Geode and it processed 90% of all online transactions in Nigeria.
What are the lessons learnt from the failure of Abokifx?
Here are a few lessons that Abokifx could have learnt from their failure:
1. Proper customer care is key
One of the reasons why the Abokifx.com lost its popularity is that they neglected to provide excellent customer care services.
It is possible that Abokifx could have gained more traffic had they put the customer first. They could have ensured that customers' requests were responded to promptly.
When all it takes is one customer complaining to go viral on social media, it is a good practice to ensure that the customer's voice is heard.
2. Emphasise on full transparency and accountability
This is one of the reasons why Abokifx.com could not gain enough customers to sustain their business.
They were so secretive about their business that people did not trust them.
