5 promising FinTech companies in Nigeria

By Edlyn Cardoza

Over the years, banking in Nigeria has improved. However, there are still numerous gaps to be filled, and a significant portion of the population is still unbanked. The rural area of Nigeria is vastly underserved when it comes to financial needs. Lack of access to credit and financial services has been the main impediment to financial growth and poverty reduction in several emerging economies.

These gaps in the financial industry pose a great opportunity for FinTechs to fill. The goal of FinTech companies in Africa is to make financial services easily accessible to the population, enhance financial procedures, promote financial inclusion and ensure seamless payments across multiple platforms.

Few years ago, not many thought the FinTech segment would be booming in Nigeria. According to a report by Frost and Sullivan, Nigeria’s FinTech revenue is expected to reach $543.3 million in 2022 from $153.1 million in 2017.

Here are 5 promising FinTech companies in Nigeria:

• Carbon

Carbon empowers individuals with access to credit, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management. Carbon is headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. They are a global company of over 90 employees with operations in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. Their mission is to empower all people with the financial access they need to pursue a life of dignity and prosperity.

• Flutterwave

Flutterwave’s on a mission to build payments infrastructure to connect Africa to the global economy. They do this by building technology, tools, and infrastructure for businesses and banks that want to provide a more seamless and secure payments experience for their customers. Founded in 2016 by a team of African finance and technology veterans from Standard Bank, PayPal, and Google Wallet, amongst others. Flutterwave has grown to become one of the fastest-growing payments companies in the world. Since its inception, Flutterwave has processed close to $2 billion in payments and 25 million transactions across over 33 African countries where it currently operates.

• Paga Group

Paga was founded in early 2009 by Tayo Oviosu to make it simple for one billion people to access and use money. Paga Group is a payments and financial services ecosystem for Africa. They focus on helping consumers and sellers pay, get paid, and access financial services. They do this directly; and through our Platform-as-a-Service, which enables other third parties to leverage the deep infrastructure we have built for endless possibilities.

• Paystack

Paystack is a technology company solving payments problems for ambitious businesses. Its mission is to help businesses in Africa become profitable, envied, and loved. They make it easy for businesses to accept secure payments from multiple local and global payment channels. They also provide tools to help you retain and acquire new customers.

• Piggyvest

Piggyvest is a platform that helps individuals and businesses manage their finances effectively – save and invest with ease. PiggyVest is the first online “Savings & Investment” app in West Africa. They first launched as ‘Piggybank.ng’ on the 7th of January 2016 as a savings-only platform. For 3 years, they offered only savings to their users. Then in April of 2019, they rebranded to “PiggyVest” and began offering direct investment opportunities to users in addition to savings. PiggyVest is on a mission to give everyone the power to better manage & grow their finances.

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