M-Pesa

• By Lending Type, Commercial Lending is expected to hold the largest market size for the year 2023.
• The commercial lending sector within the Corporate Lending Platform Market encompasses a diverse range of financial services provided to businesses and corporations.
• Digital transformation plays a crucial role in driving the Corporate Lending Platform Market in the MEA region.
• Corporate Lending Platform Market Advantages:
  Corporate lending platforms automate processes including loan origination, underwriting, and servicing to expedite the lending process.

• Opera designed and built MiniPay in collaboration with the Celo Foundation, enabling rapid wallet-to-wallet stablecoin transfers with sub-cent fees using mobile phone numbers and fast onboarding with automatic wallet backup through Google.
• The wallet's foundation is built on speed, reliability, and financial inclusivity, making it an indispensable tool for users across Africa.
• Now one of the most popular apps and well-known brands in Africa, Opera counts over 100 million users across the continent.
• MiniPay will become available to Opera Mini users across Africa within the coming months, first launching in Nigeria.

• But it also led people to turn to digital financial services such as the use of point of sale (PoS) machines for payments in their transactions.
• Digital financial services are financial services which rely on digital technologies for their delivery and use by consumers.
• One outcome was that Nigerians sought alternative ways to pay for goods and services using digital alternatives, such as point of sale machines.
• In 2017, there were around 155,000 terminals, and this number has increased to roughly 1.1 million as of April 2022.
• Total cashless transactions also rose by 45.41% year-on-year to N39.58 trillion (US$85.96 billion) in January 2023.

What are the most developed forms of electronic transacting in Nigeria?

• They are now ubiquitous throughout Nigeria - in supermarkets, large retail outlets as well as in small-scale businesses set up for this purpose only.
• Payment service banks: These are technology driven companies licensed by the Central Bank to engage in banking activities.
• Mobile money: Financial service offered by a mobile network operator and can be independent of the traditional banking network.
• A bank account is not required to use mobile money services – the only pre-requisite is a basic mobile phone.

Can you paint a picture of the banking landscape?

• According to February 2022 data only 39% of Nigerians use the formal banking system.
• As has been shown elsewhere, mobile money offerings, as well as other digital services, can extend banking to the unbanked.
• Its value also increased by 381.5% from N80.4 trillion (US$174.6 billion) as at 2018 to N387.1 trillion (US$840.67billion) in 2022.
• It is also an indication of the huge opportunities that mobile money operators and other forms of digital payments have in Nigeria.

How does Nigeria’s digital currency eNaira fit into the picture?

• However, less than 0.5% of Nigerians were recorded as using it a year after its launch.
• The Central Bank didn’t have an adoption strategy for the eNaira planned ahead of the currency change over.
• Although the aim of the currency was to facilitate financial inclusion and shrink the size of the informal market, it’s fallen short of the mark.


A lesson of the currency crisis is that fintech offers a solution to the limitations of legacy financial institutions, and at the same time, they can help address the financial exclusion challenge in Nigeria. Had Nigeria appreciated the value of digital finance and particularly the key role to be played by mobile money operators, the impact of the crisis would not have been as painful.

• DUBAI, UAE, March 16, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Optasia, a leading Fintech services provider, proudly announces that VodaCash, a Vodacom Congo subsidiary, and Access Bank will operate its AI-led platform's capabilities to deliver their latest Micro Lending solutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• The Micro Lending overdraft service that Optasia enables, will be offered in DRC through VodaCash under its branding M-Pesa, together with Access Bank as the financial partner, under the commercial name "M-Pesa Rallonge", reaching approximately 6 million M-Pesa users in the country.
• "We are happy to enable financial access to the people in DRC through such prestigious partners as Vodacom and Access Bank."
• With the solutions and versatility provided by the company's proprietary AI-led platform, Optasia supports underbanked populations by providing them with previously unavailable access to financing.