The state of mobile money in Nigeria in 2025
Nigeria has some of the most innovative fintech in Africa and some of the most persistent financial exclusion. Here is what the data says.
Nigeria is a country of contrasts in financial services. On one hand, it has produced some of Africa's most ambitious fintech companies. On the other, the Central Bank of Nigeria estimates that over 30 million adults remain unbanked.
How can both be true at once?
The infrastructure problem
The big fintech apps require smartphones, reliable data, and enough digital literacy to navigate a multi-screen onboarding. For a trader in Kano or a farmer in Enugu, these are not trivial requirements.
USSD has been the workhorse for financial inclusion. It works on any phone, no internet required. But USSD sessions time out, menus are confusing, and the experience has not meaningfully improved in a decade.
WhatsApp as financial infrastructure
This is why WhatsApp is interesting. Nigeria has approximately 90 million WhatsApp users. It works on low-end Android phones. Nigerians are deeply comfortable with it. They use it for church groups, market coordination, and family communication.
When financial services move into WhatsApp, the barrier to access drops dramatically. You do not need to explain a new interface. The interface is already a chat.
What this means for inclusion
The promise of conversational banking is not just convenience for people who are already banked. It is genuine access for people who were not.
A first-time banking customer does not need to understand what a "dashboard" is. They just need to type what they want. That is a fundamentally lower bar and a fundamentally larger market.
At Kolet, this is the mission we wake up to every day.