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- How a homegrown technology company is solving the everyday challenges of African retailers—one store at a time.
Every evening across Nigeria, millions of retailers close their shops after another long day of business.
They remember the sales they made.
But they don’t always know what stock went missing, whether every payment collected made it into the business account, or whether a dishonest employee used a personal account or POS terminal to divert customer payments.
For many retailers, these silent losses have become accepted as part of doing business.
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At Ovaloop, we believe they shouldn’t be.
Built by Africans, for African Retailers
Ovaloop is proudly one of the most homegrown retail technology solutions built specifically for African retailers.
Rather than adapting software designed for Western markets, Ovaloop was built around how business is actually conducted across Nigeria and Africa—where retailers often combine cash and transfers, internet connectivity can be inconsistent, and business owners need practical solutions rather than complex software.
The company’s mission is simple: Build technology that understands African retail.
Co-founded by Princewill Mba (CEO) and Daniel Kilanko (Co-founder & CTO), Ovaloop has grown through customer revenue and close engagement with retailers, allowing customer feedback—not investor assumptions—to shape every feature released.
Every product improvement starts with one question:
“Does this solve a real problem for our retailers?”
More Than Software—A Retail Operating System
Today, Ovaloop enables retailers to manage inventory, sales, payments, reporting, customer records, and e-commerce from one integrated platform.
Instead of switching between multiple applications or relying on notebooks and spreadsheets, retailers can operate their businesses from a single system built specifically for their daily operations. The impact is already becoming evident.
Ovaloop currently supports businesses processing an average of ₦4.5 billion in transactions every month, demonstrating the growing confidence retailers place in the platform.
With recent infrastructure improvements and strategic partnerships, the company is now positioning itself to serve more than 100,000 retailers across Nigeria and, ultimately, Africa.
Solving One of Retail’s Biggest Hidden Problems
While inventory management and reporting remain critical challenges, Ovaloop has identified another issue affecting thousands of retailers every day:
Payment diversion and internal theft.
Across many businesses, customers unknowingly transfer money into personal accounts or unauthorized POS terminals operated by dishonest sales personnel. The retailer completes the sale but never receives the payment.
It is a problem that costs businesses millions of naira every year.
To address this challenge, Ovaloop is now powered by Fidelity Bank to strengthen its payment ecosystem and introduce an industry-first solution for merchants.
Introducing Pay Protect
As part of this collaboration, Ovaloop is now powered by Fidelity Bank to unveil Pay Protect—a payment protection system designed specifically for retailers.
For retailers, this means greater transparency, stronger financial controls, and increased confidence that every completed sale is accurately captured.
Beyond payments, Ovaloop continues to expand its ecosystem through strategic collaborations.
Its recent partnership with Nexmart is accelerating the rollout of Ovaloop’s e-commerce capabilities, enabling retailers to seamlessly sell online while managing inventory, orders, payments, and customer relationships from a single platform.
Together, these partnerships strengthen Ovaloop’s position as more than an inventory solution—they establish it as the operational backbone for modern retail businesses.
Listening Before Building
One of the company’s defining principles is staying close to the retailers it serves.
That philosophy was evident during Ovaloop Founders’ Connect, an informal gathering that brought retailers, distributors, business owners, and partners together for open conversations about the future of retail technology.
Rather than delivering polished presentations, the founders spent much of the session listening to business owners discuss the challenges they encounter every day.
Those conversations continue to shape the company’s product roadmap.
As the company continues to expand through innovation, strategic partnerships, and customer-led product development, one principle remains unchanged:
Build for the retailer first. Everything else follows.
