Nigeria’s mobile money story is one of quiet transformation built not in glass towers, but through millions of small daily transactions happening across markets, bus parks, and neighborhoods.
What began as a push for financial inclusion has now become one of the country’s biggest fintech success stories, powered by smartphones and a fast-growing digital economy.
As affordable smartphones found their way into more Nigerian hands, mobile wallets became the simplest bridge between cash and convenience. The results have been staggering. Data from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) shows that mobile money transactions hit N20.71 trillion($13.95 billion) in Q1 2025, a jump of 1,518% from N1.28 trillion in Q1 2021.
According to an earlier report by Nairametrics, Donald Ubeh, Head of Risk and Compliance at PalmPay, says mobile money operators have helped raise Nigeria’s financial inclusion rate to 74% in 2023, up from 51% in 2016. Today, over 1.5 million agents are on the field, handling about 60% of all transactions and moving more than $1 trillion in 2023 alone.
Behind these numbers are the founders building the digital rails of Nigeria’s payment system visionaries, who saw opportunity where banks saw barriers.
Methodology
In this feature, we spotlight owners of Mobile Money Operators licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the people reshaping how money moves across Africa’s largest economy.
Although there are 18 licensed Mobile Money Operators (MMOs) in Nigeria, this list focuses only on companies with publicly verifiable data footprints, including ownership records, founding history, and regulatory documentation. Other licensed operators not featured here either have limited public disclosures or closed documentation regarding their company ownership and control structures.
Dr. Valentine Obi is a Nigerian technology entrepreneur and the Founder and Group CEO of eTranzact International Plc, one of Africa’s first digital payment platforms, established in 2003.
- Under his leadership, eTranzact revolutionized electronic payments in Africa, expanding operations across Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Cameroon, Uganda, and the DRC.
- Beyond eTranzact, Dr. Obi founded XCEL Inc., a London-based neobank focused on digital banking, and KYIARA, an invoice factoring platform streamlining trade finance in Africa.
Dr. Obi holds an MBA from Instituto de Empresa (Madrid), a doctorate from the International School of Management (Paris), and is an alumnus of Harvard Business School. eTranzact is Africa’s premier e-payments solution provider, delivering electronic transaction switching and payment processing solutions across POS, web, mobile, ATMs, and cards.
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