Business
Moniepoint takes leadership position in digital banking
By AYOOLA OLAOLUWA
Moniepoint has brushed off stiff competition from industry giants like Opay, Carbon, PalmPay and Kuda to become one of Nigeria’s leading payments and digital banking platforms.
From a humble beginning in 2015 as a back-end service provider to Nigerian banks, the firm had grown to become an household name across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, with more people daily embracing the platform owing to the cutting-edge services it offers its customers.
The short, but eventful journey to success and stardom began in the year 2015 when two tech wizards, Felix Ike and Tosin Eniolorunda, left banking services provider, Interswitch, to set up TeamApt.
Despite their toiling and best efforts, the break they had diligently toiled and prayed for didn’t come until 2019 when its flagship product, Moniepoint, was awarded a switching license by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
More breakthroughs soon followed, with one of them being a banking license from the CBN in 2022 to provide business banking services (agency banking) to merchants operating in the country.
From that moment on, Ike and Eniolorunda did not look back. They toiled day and night to earn their rightful place in the Nigerian payments and digital banking space.
For instance, Moniepoint changed the face of agency banking in the country by making specialized products (instant savings and loans, as well as quick credits) available to consumers, described by many financial experts as vertical banking.
“Though Moniepoint did not bring agency and vertical banking to Nigeria, it took it to the next level by creating niche products that serve the specific needs of relatively narrow customer segments.
“Probably due to the technical skills and experience they acquired in school and while working with Interswitch, their services are topnotch. You hardly experience a failed transaction on their platform.
“In the event of a sudden loss of network during a digital financial transaction, or when a service provider, whether cable TV, energy or airtime goes off grid or suddenly becomes unavailable, rather than the transaction terminating as failed and customer’s funds deducted, what you will see is ‘transaction processing’.
“Anytime service is restored, the process automatically kicks off by itself from where it stopped without any prompting and you will get ‘transaction successful’ message on your screen.
“Banks and most fintechs don’t have this advanced technology. That is why you see many failed transactions while sending money on banks apps as the transaction will be aborted and funds trapped in the event of a sudden network failure.
“Anytime we (commercial banks) think that we are about to catch up with them (fintechs), they keep upping their games”, declared a top banker in a first generation bank, who did not want his identity revealed.
To ensure easy and convenient transaction, Moniepoint also have a large network of offline agents in every corner of the federation to attend to customers.
Checks revealed that the firm has over 1.6 million onboarded businesses and 611,213 agents across the country, who help to onboard people without smartphones.
These highly trained agent, it was learnt, help customers to open personal accounts and issue them instant credit and debit cards that can be used to carry out financial transactions on every channel.
Expectedly, more customers, especially businesses, are daily pitching tent with Moniepoint.
Available data obtained by BH suggests that Moniepoint is now the 4th largest financial institution in the country, according to customer base, with 33 million customers, coming behind only Access Bank in number one position with 49 million customers, OPay 40 million and First Bank 39 million.
Moniepoint also beats tier-1 category banks like UBA 30 million and GTBank 28 million to the 5th and 6th positions respectively.
According to the company, it currently processes over $14.16 billion monthly and $170 billion in annualized total payment volume (TPV), making it the largest fintech company in sub-Saharan Africa.
Though Moniepoint’s revenue is not in the public space since it is not a quoted company, a spokesperson for the company said its revenue for its last financial year 2022 was several hundreds of millions of dollars.
A recent survey conducted by BH in Lagos suggests that 7 out of 10 medium scale enterprises, particularly pharmaceutical companies, eateries, supermarkets, fuel stations, educational institutions and hospitals, among many others operate business accounts with the firm.
At the last count, over 1.5 million businesses have accounts with Moniepoint Microfinance Bank.
Some of the account holders, who spoke to our correspondent on their preference for Moniepoint, claimed that apart from the premium products offered by the financial institution, the major enticement is the fact that the bank has physical outlets, where they can be traced to in the event of a possible collapse or liquidation.
“Digital platform like Opay and PalmPay are also good, but the absence of physical structures, where they can be contacted if they failed is still hunting them.
“While we still use other fintechs to collect money from customers, the bulk of the money is transfered within 24 hours to our Moniepoint accounts or conventional banks with physical branches that can not just close shops and bolt with our funds”, a pharmacist with multiple outlets on Lagos mainland told our correspondent.
Another factor that is driving more customers to Moniepoint is the lure of securing credit facilities from the firm.
Moniepoint, BH learnt, had given out several billions of naira as soft loans to many of its customers to grow their businesses.
The loans, which come with much lower interest rates compared with other fintechs, it was gathered, are very easy to secure unlike those offered by conventional banks, which comes with back breaking terms and conditions.
In spite of these evident achievements in a relatively short period, Moniepoint’s management team, like the famed Oliver Twist in Charles Dickens famous novel, are not contended.
Despite dominating the agency banking space alongside OPay and Palmpay, Moniepoint on August 18, 2023, announced its expansion into the retail banking business.
This audacious move, financial experts predict, will set the firm up for direct competition with traditional banks, who have dominated the retail market practically unchallenged in the last 100 years.
To achieve this daunting task, Moniepoint is entering the retail market with a new consumer app and debit card, which it said would be available to its 33 million terminal users and over 1.5 million businesses that currently bank with Moniepoint Microfinance Bank across the country.
Speaking on Moniepoint’s foray into the nation’s retail banking business, the firm’s Senior Vice President for Channels and Sales Tools, Ope Adeyemi, said the move would enable the company to connect businesses and customers more effectively while supporting them with reliable infrastructure and services.
“We have always been committed to providing financial happiness, so it was a natural next step when dealing with so many businesses, to also offer our reliable services to their customers and employees.
“By taking this step, we are determined to power the dreams of millions of people across the continent”, Adeyemi said.
Some of the services Moniepoint customers, who tap into its retail banking will benefit from is salary advances and the ability to use its cards on all banks ATMs, POS machines and in online stores.
Meanwhile, in a bid to further maximise the success of its flagship product, Moniepoint, its parent company, TeamApt, recently adopted the name as its official name.
“The Moniepoint brand is already an established and trusted name among its customer base in Nigeria, and adopting it as the name means one less layer between the brand and the people it intends to serve”, the company said in a statement made available to BH.
Apart from rebranding it’s name, the company’s management also announced plans to establish it as a global company by moving its headquarters to London.
While Moniepoint intends to expand into East and North Africa in order to tap into large markets, where millions of businesses are underserved, it said there are no plans to provide services in the UK market.
Recognising its exponential growth and contributions to the Nigerian banking sector, the CBN in 2022 presented Moniepoint with the National Inclusive Payment Initiative Award as one of the top 250 financial technology firms in the world.
