Moniepoint & Google Cloud to offer financial services to underbanked businesses in Nigeria

By Delisha Fernandes

Google Cloud announced a new collaboration with Moniepoint, an Africa-focused business banking platform providing financial services to Nigeria’s underbanked businesses in remote areas and communities.

The collaboration makes financial services accessible at scale to millions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by bridging the banking gap in suburban locations.

Felix Ike, Chief Technology Officer, Moniepoint, said, “Google Cloud has been a critical enabler in fueling Moniepoint’s growth journey from day one, as we expanded from a small business to become a licensed business bank that caters to 1.3 million companies across Nigeria today. Our development team is empowered with the latest technology to process financial transactions quickly and move fast with requests, as Google Cloud technologies are easy to deploy.

Google Cloud’s scalable infrastructure provides Moniepoint with low-latency internet access that helps the company deliver efficient banking services to its customers without lag when using the platform. This, in turn, enables Moniepoint to succeed in making its banking services accessible to Nigeria’s remote towns and communities where internet connectivity poses challenges to businesses outside Nigeria’s commercial hubs—where mainstream banking is more accessible.

Niral Patel, Director of Google Cloud Africa, said, “Nigeria’s Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) revealed that 50 % of Nigeria’s 207 million adult population is underbanked. Moniepoint is a unique business model established to drive financial inclusion and positively impact people’s livelihoods by providing SMEs with access to banking services. The company has grown from a small to a large-scale business by capitalising on Google Cloud’s cost-effective cloud solutions that have enabled automating its manual processes.”