3 promising FinTech start-ups to watch out for in Nigeria

By Leandra Monteiro

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 are vastly underserved when it comes to financial needs.

These gaps in the financial industry pose a great opportunity for FinTechs to fill. The FinTech (Financial technology) sector is one of the biggest start-up sectors in Nigeria. These companies in Nigeria are driving real change for consumers as well as businesses.

Few years ago, not many would have 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’s a look at three promising FinTech companies in the country-

FlutterWave: Founded in 2016 by a team of African finance and technology veterans from Standard Bank, PayPal, Google Wallet amongst others, Flutterwave is a payment start-up. The company completes payment services from more than 68 online payment gateways in Nigeria. Since inception Flutterwave claims to have processed close to $2 billion in payments and 25 million transactions across over 33 African countries where it currently operates.

Flutterwave recently entered the unicorn league after attracting significant investment from experienced FinTech investors. Flutterwave provides technology, infrastructure and services to allow global merchants, payment service providers, and Pan African banks to acknowledge and process payments on different channel such as Web, Mobile, ATM and POS.

PayStack: PayStack is among the top four FinTech companies in the African country. Founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade, now the company’s CEO and Ezra Olubi, now serving as the company’s CTO.

Paystack is an digital payments company in Nigeria. It currently positions itself as a growth engine for innovative financial solutions Africa. At heart Paystack facilitates easy online and offline payments in Africa.

Piggyvest: Piggyvest initially launched as an online savings platform in Nigeria. The platform was founded to empower savers to put away funds that they would prefer not to withdraw effectively. PiggyVest offers different saving plans. They can save as small as $1 per day and later limit when they withdraw their savings to explicit set dates of choice.

There are also other features on PiggyVest, such as the Flex Dollar that enables you to save in dollar, earn interest and transfer dollar to any other user on PiggyVest.

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