With the growth surge in the fintech sector, Nigeria’s banks are under pressure to stay relevant and to continue acquiring unbanked customers. This new sector is largely run by the youth.
PiggyVest
- Co-founded by Odunayo Eweniyi, Somto Ifezue and Joshua Chibueze.
- These three are some of the biggest players in Nigeria’s fintech industry, having taken a popular yet traditional form of savings, ajo (thrift contribution) and redefined it into a million-plus-user platform accessible to people who are either looking to save money or to manage their wealth outside of the traditional banks. In 2016, the trio launched a savings app, then known as Piggybank.ng. In 2019, their app transitioned into a wealth-management platform and ended the year with more than one million users who had saved about $80m, according to Eweniyi.
Flutterwave
- Co-founded by Olugbenga Agboola and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji.
- Flutterwave, known as one of Africa’s top payment platforms, was co-founded by Olugbenga Agboola and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji in 2016. In the years since its launch, the company has raised $55m in seed funding and is providing payment services to global merchants, as well as payment service providers. Its partnership with Chinese payments giant Alibaba’s Alipay in 2019 led to Barter, a consumer payment product that also offers virtual payment cards.
Kuda Bank
- Co-founded by Babs Ogundeyi and Musty Mustapha.
- The Nigerian digital bank Kuda raised $10m in funding four years after it first launched in 2016 as lending platform Kudimoney. It is now Nigeria’s first and only online-only bank.
- The bank will focus on accelerating growth plans built on key hires, product development, as well as its expansion plans across Africa. The digital bank has partnerships with Zenith Bank, Access Bank and Guaranty Trust Bank. It became the first Nigerian bank to be added to the Binance P2P payment platform, providing cryptocurrency payments and trading platforms for customers on Kuda Bank.
This article is available as part of the print edition of The Africa Report magazine: ‘Africa in 2021 – Who will be the winners and losers of the post-Covid era?’
https://www.theafricareport.com/72175/nigeria-whos-who-in-the-fintech-sector/
