Afrigather Moniepoint, a fintech large that operates considered one of Nigeria’s largest agent networks, has launched its first casual financial system report, detailing key insights into the casual financial system similar to monetary habits and digital funds tendencies. The fintech spoke to over 2 million Nigerian companies that signed up on its platform between 2019 and 2024 and excluded knowledge from the hundreds of brokers
Listed below are 5 fascinating issues we realized from the report.
Playing cards dominate offline funds
Of the two million companies Moniepoint interviewed, about 80% choose card funds to transfers for in-person transactions. That is in distinction to on-line funds dominated by on-line transfers, in keeping with figures from the central financial institution. Digital funds loved its greatest yr ever in 2023, after an ill-thought cashless coverage that made money scarce compelled many Nigerians to make use of digital technique of cost. Regardless of a reversal of the coverage, Nigerians nonetheless caught to digital funds and corporations like Moniepoint which processed 5.2 billion transactions, shortly grew to become a part of every day life.
Unsurprisingly, Lagos is Nigeria’s business capital
Lagos has all the time been Nigeria’s money cow regardless of being its smallest state because the nation’s independence because of its location and it being the primary capital of the nation. The state homes 15% of Nigeria’s casual financial system, and is barely surpassed by the North Central area—the nation’s meals basket and residential to the present capital— and the South West, the place Lagos is positioned.
Nigerian companies would reasonably borrow cash from mortgage apps than banks
When mortgage apps burst onto the scene, that they had a compelling motive to supply credit score to Nigerians as business banks sometimes didn’t provide loans to small companies and people. In response to a 2023 report, credit score use in Nigeria is only 6%. Whereas the casual financial system prefers to borrow cash from family and friends, mortgage apps got here in second and have surpassed conventional banks.
Nigerian companies choose saving on digital platforms to banks
In response to Moniepoint’s report, 92.4% of casual companies lower your expenses however would reasonably save on digital platforms than conventional banks, exhibiting the rising affect of fintechs in Nigeria. Cooperatives and contributions account for nearly half of the saving decisions of the casual financial system, as they’re run by members of the casual sector. For the fintechs, prospects saving on their platform symbolize a boon to the underside line as these deposits turn into the loans they offer out to prospects.
Nigerian companies are comparatively younger
Greater than 80% of respondents mentioned that their enterprise was greater than 5 years previous, a worrying pattern that exhibits most companies are dying younger. Nearly all of companies have been round for lower than 5 years however greater than 2 years, which was adopted by companies that have been greater than six months previous however youthful than a yr.
