Offering digital payment, financial inclusion and entrepreneurship – Moniepoint CEO

Tosin Eniolorunda is a leading innovator in the African Fintech space and co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Moniepoint Inc, a global, all-in-one, digital financial services provider with operations in Nigeria and an ongoing expansion into other emerging markets. Since 2019, Moniepoint has powered over a million businesses, offering payment, banking, credit, and business management tools. He speaks with PAUL OGBUOKIRI about the future of Africa’s fintech ecosystem

What is the core business of Moniepoint, and what is the gap you see your company filling in the market?

We are an all-in-one payments and banking platform, and one of the fastestgrowing companies in Africa. Our core business revolves around empowering businesses and their customers with seamless payment, banking, credit, and management tools. We provide near-perfect reliability with a 99 per cent transaction success rate, instant settlement for businesses, and a robust network of relationship managers in every community. This ensures that we offer digital payment solutions but also drive financial inclusion and support businesses in under-served areas with limited access to banking services.

Moniepoint played a very crucial role in mitigating the impact of the cash crunch in the country in 2023. How did the company grow to become this important, especially for the informal sector?

Moniepoint started its journey as TeamApt, a service provider for banks and financial institutions, before entering the agency banking space. The company then evolved to become a fullfledged business banking platform — processing over $14 billion monthly. In April 2022, Moniepoint evolved from enabling card transactions for agents to an all-in-one business bank. With this transition, we found ourselves in a position that fit the needs of businesses in the informal economy during the cash crunch. With reduced access to cash, alternative payment methods became important for businesses. Our business bank accounts and point-of-sale terminals could keep businesses going during this period. Our team’s previous experience building banking infrastructure also helped reduce processor failure disputes to about 10 per cent daily and reduced downtime by 60 per cent.

What role does Moniepoint intend play in an increasingly cashless economy in Nigeria and other parts of Africa?

By being a banking partner for businesses, we enable them to receive payments digitally, which is very important in Africa’s journey towards becoming a cashless economy. In 2022, we helped businesses process over $170 billion, and are continuing this positive trend in 2023. We are determined to stay at the forefront of the digital revolution. Initial efforts across the continent have been focused on providing individuals with access to digital financial services, giving them cards and other means to pay digitally. It’s not enough for customers to be empowered to pay digitally; the businesses have to be equipped with the education and resources to receive these payments. When businesses are able to receive these digital payments directly, cash becomes less central to every transaction, and we’re collectively closer to a cashless ecosystem.

Who are your target customers and how do you reach them?

We serve businesses of all sizes but are particularly focused on small and medium-sized enterprises, which traditional financial institutions often overlook. Our customers are everywhere in Nigeria, from the busy city streets to underserved and rural areas across the country. We serve over three million users, providing them with business banking products, payment solutions, and working capital loans. Our extensive distribution network, with tens of thousands of relationship managers, ensures that we reach customers wherever they are, offering support in their local languages and making our services accessible even to those with limited digital literacy. We are also building products to allow these businesses to trade easily on a global scale.

How have you designed your sales funnel to reach and impact women?

We have implemented a gender-intelligent sales funnel that recognizes and addresses women’s unique barriers to accessing financial services. By disaggregating KPIs at all stages of the sales funnel and systematically addressing gender disparities, we have increased our female customer conversion rates. Our approach includes offering tailored digital payments, banking services, and working capital loans, specifically catering to sectors where women thrive, such as retail and trade, food and drinks, beauty, and personal care. We also ensure that our relationship managers are equipped to support women entrepreneurs, making our services inclusive and accessible. Our portfolio is rich with stories of women we have empowered in various dimensions. From entrepreneurs preserving family legacies, to those who after losing a supportive loved one, found no help until we stepped in, to innovators disrupting traditional industries with fresh approaches. Women entrepreneurs are experiencing our impact nationwide.

Africa is home to several fintech companies that are solving similar problems. What makes Moniepoint different?

We’re continuously innovating to ensure that our solutions stay relevant to businesses. In 2022, we recognized that although direct transfers are a staple payment choice for many consumers, they’re typically hard to track. Our POS transfer solution made it easier for businesses to receive payments they could easily monitor. Furthermore, we recognized very early on the efficacy of a hybrid distribution model in Africa, which is offline plus digital instead of purely digital distribution. Most African markets are low-trust and typically require a human interface before adopting digital solutions. This meant we could get directly in touch with the businesses needing our products.

What is your view on Africa’s fintech ecosystem, and how does this view influence your company’s plans?

Fintech in Africa is growing at a rapid pace, but a lot of people are still left out of this system. Cash is still used in most transactions on the continent, so there is still much work to be done. Business needs are unique from one market to another, but at the heart of it is the desire to grow, and this growth can support the economy.

Given your successes in Nigeria so far, what is your ambition going forward?

By introducing POS transfers and its Monnify web payments product, Moniepoint has tapped into the massive market of small-to-medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria, reaching three million active business customers processing $182 billion in transactions in 2023. It is now poised to expand into Kenya and the United Kingdom.

What is the financial services industry like in Nigeria?

And what is its relationship with the fintech ecosystem? The financial services industry in Nigeria is generally a collaborative one. The Central Bank of Nigeria drives policy change in collaboration with all players in the industry – traditional banks and fintech players – all geared towards a more financially inclusive ecosystem. An example of how this plays out is fintechs working with traditional banks as their settlement partners, and traditional banks providing virtual account solutions to fintechs so they can, in turn, provide digital wallets to their customers. It’s also recognized that fintechs take a generally technology-first approach to financial solutions, and regulations exist to make this as seamless as possible.

Which government policies can be implemented for companies to thrive in Nigeria?

Legal System Reforms – Businesses, local and international, will benefit from a reform in the legal system that will improve the speed of the courts in dispensing justice and adjudicating business cases. Security Architecture Reforms – Security was a key challenge to Nigerian businesses in 2022. A reform in this sector will help a lot. State and neighborhood policing are recommended for improvement in security of life and properties thus spurring economic activities across the country. Ease of doing business – Nigeria has to drastically improve on its ease of doing business ranking. According to World Bank annual rankings, Nigeria is currently ranked 131 out of 190 economies in the world. Implementing some or all of the above reforms will have a positive impact on Nigeria’s ease of doing business ranking.

How will Africa develop as a knowledge economy, going forward and how can companies contribute in this regard?

Part of the key challenges of developing the African knowledge economy is the excessive migration of its best and brightest brains to the western world, otherwise known as ‘brain drain’ or ‘Japa’ in local Nigerian parlance. African governments must formulate and implement policies to stem this tide and possibly reverse the trend. Proper management of the expatriate quota system will equally help in developing the knowledge economy of African countries going forward. Expatriates should be recruited for only positions where there is shortage of local qualified manpower while the authorities should ensure that there is intentional and monitored policy for the transfer of knowledge and expertise from the expatriates to their indigenous understudies. Companies can contribute by expending adequate funds in research, training & development as well as other knowledge enhancing activities.