In Nigeria, more than one in three adults are still financially excluded, while neighbouring countries such as Ghana have close to 95% inclusion¹.

Critically, the poorest parts of the population continue to lag behind, with only 24% of the poorest 40% holding a bank account². Rural populations and women continue to make up a large portion of the underserved and unserved. As a consequence, the majority of transactions in Nigeria continue to occur through cash³, with low penetration of formal lending, insurance and other financial products. An average Nigerian is over five times more likely to borrow money from family and friends (28.3%) versus a bank (5.3%) and only 2.6% of the population have a home loan⁴. The reasons for these low rates of financial inclusion are numerous. Recent surveys have found that most Nigerians do not know of a mobile money service point within a bus ride of their house while 37% cited broken ATM machines as a barrier⁵. In the same survey, 21% of Nigerians said they did not have the necessary documents to open a mobile money or bank account, and only 16% were considered financially literate.

At the same time, financial inclusion is key to modernising Nigeria’s economy, lifting savings rates and enhancing household resilience, stamping out worker exploitation in the informal economy, creating more opportunities for women and girls and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Nigeria’s transition to cleaner, decarbonised technologies also relies on improved financial inclusion. In Kenya, where financial inclusion is greater, mobile money products have helped drive a spike in pay-as-you-go renewable energy usage through providers such as Sun King. Meanwhile, 80 million Nigerians lack access to electricity⁶, and almost 14 billion annually is spent on small diesel generators to supplement grid power⁷.

Interswitch is Nigeria’s largest financial payments interchange, processing more than 90% of the country’s card and mobile money transactions⁸.

It is strategically positioned to deliver rapid financial inclusion to Nigeria’s 213 million people, as well as neighbouring markets in sub-Saharan Africa, where 1 billion emerging consumers live.

Interswitch has six key business lines, including three that directly interface with and target the unbanked and underbanked customer. These three businesses – Inclusio, Paytoken and Paymate – provide a comprehensive suite of financial tools to help transition Nigeria’s, and broadly sub-Saharan Africa’s, payments ecosystem towards better efficiency and transparency.

Inclusio, a banking network of almost 50,000 agents, helps individuals access a range of financial services from deposits, cash out, mobile top ups and fund transfers. With close to half of the country’s population classified as rural or peri-urban, Inclusio leverages a broad agent network to access harder-to-reach consumers, also reducing the time and costs that customers incur travelling to a bank branch and providing services outside of regular banking hours.

Paytoken offers a range of physical cards and electronic tokens for payment under the Verve brand. Transactions through these products have grown rapidly at over 30% annually across the last five years, with 45 million cards now in circulation. Verve prepaid debit cards, in particular, offer a low barrier to entry for unbanked customers apprehensive about signing up for a bank account.

Paymate, another key Interswitch business, operates a nation-wide merchant platform that drives SME growth. It has already registered 5,100 merchants on its platform, allowing them to accept payments and reach customers without bank accounts.