Business
How Moniepoint Built a Billion Dollar Engine in the Informal Sector
In 2015, Tosin Eniolorunda co founded Moniepoint to bring reliable payments and credit to everyday traders ignored by traditional banks. By deploying aggressive field agents, fixing transaction failure rates, and giving shop owners instant bulk settlement
For decades, traditional banks in Nigeria focused almost entirely on big corporations and salaried office workers.
Meanwhile, everyday traders like food sellers, provision shop owners, and market kiosks handled cash daily while remaining completely cut off from basic financial tools.
In 2015, Tosin Eniolorunda co founded Moniepoint to solve this exact problem. Under his leadership, the company built payment and credit tools specifically for micro and small enterprises, achieving unicorn status with a valuation over 1 billion dollars and growing into one of the fastest expanding financial platforms in Africa.
Instead of building strictly for formal corporate offices, Moniepoint went straight into Nigeria's street economy using three distinct strategies:
1. Feet on the Street Agent Network
Informal traders operate on personal relationships and human interaction. Moniepoint did not rely solely on digital downloads or online advertising. Instead, they built an aggressive ground force of field agents who moved directly into local markets. These agents onboarded merchants in person, offered immediate support, and built real trust within local trading hubs.
2. Near Perfect System Uptime
Moniepoint studied the exact technical breakdowns behind failed transfers and card payments on traditional bank networks. When they shifted focus to merchant services, they engineered a dedicated infrastructure designed for high network reliability, ensuring card transactions went through smoothly when customers were standing at the counter.
3. Instant Bulk Settlement
For a market trader, daily cash flow is immediate. Legacy banks routinely took days to settle card payments into a merchant's bank account. If a grocery kiosk owner had their working capital trapped in bank delays, they could not buy stock for the next morning. Moniepoint eliminated this pain point by building a bulk settlement system that gave merchants instant access to their transaction funds.
This single operational fix transformed their point of sale terminals from a luxury electronic gadget into an essential daily business utility.
By solving low level payment friction for millions of small enterprises, Moniepoint proved that serving the informal sector is a massive commercial opportunity.
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