Sub-Saharan Africa · GDP rank #29
Nigeria
NG · NGN @ 0.0007290/USD
Nigeria is Africa's largest fintech market and its most turbulent — a freshly floated naira, inflation above 30%, the world's best-documented failed retail CBDC (eNaira, still in live_stalled status), and the continent's deepest private mobile-money economy (OPay, PalmPay, Moniepoint, Kuda) operating alongside the Verve domestic card scheme. NIBSS' NIP rail cleared 11.6bn transactions in 2024, more than any other African instant system; the naira has been the best-performing African currency YTD in 2026 as IMTO settlement reforms pulled informal-market flows formal.
Tab 02
Consumer payments
How consumers actually pay: the share of cash, the stock and flow of cards, the scheme split at checkout, which mobile wallets matter, and how broadly POS acceptance reaches.
Every figure is authored against a named publisher — click the ⓘ anywhere to open the source panel with the underlying URL and access date.
Cash share of POS volume
Cash share of POS value
Debit-card penetration
Credit-card penetration
Payment mix
Cash vs. non-cash
The authored corpus for this country carries a single cash figure; the remainder is reported as a pooled non-cash bucket. See the card and wallet sections for the break-down within that bucket.
Share of POS
- Cash52%
- Non-cash (cards + wallets + A2A)48%
Cash behaviour
- Trend
- mixed
- Context
- Cash share fell sharply in Q1 2023 during the naira redesign crisis — NIP volumes spiked on forced substitution — but has partially rebounded. Fintech wallets now lead rural financial inclusion. CBN cashless-policy ATM withdrawal limits (₦20,000/day individuals, ₦100,000/day corporates) under enforcement since 2024.
Source · Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)
Scheme share
Which networks clear the card volume
Scheme share is the split of general-purpose card purchase volume — not issuance, not count of cards. A high domestic share (e.g. UnionPay, RuPay, ELO) means a large share of card flow never touches a global scheme.
Verve is Africa's largest domestic card scheme (Interswitch-owned); ~59% of Nigerian debit issuance.
Share of card volume
- Verve59%
- Mastercard23%
- Visa17%
- Amex1%
Debit transactions · 2024
Active debit cards
Credit transactions · 2024
Active credit cards
Mobile wallets
Where wallets actually land
User counts are the best single scalar for wallet reach, but they understate usage intensity in markets where one super-app carries multi-digit trillions of renminbi or rupees. For flow, see the rails tab.
Active users
- OPay40.0M
super-app wallet + micro-bank
- PalmPay30.0M
super-app wallet
- Moniepoint (Agent Network + Personal Banking)15.0M
agent-led micro-banking
- Kuda7.5M
neobank
Notable wallets
OPay
super-app wallet + micro-bank
Operator · Opera Norway ASA subsidiary (Softbank-backed)
Became Nigeria's largest wallet during 2023 naira-redesign cash squeeze; operates under MMO (Mobile Money Operator) licence.
OPay
PalmPay
super-app wallet
Operator · PalmPay (Transsion Holdings-backed)
PalmPay
Moniepoint (Agent Network + Personal Banking)
agent-led micro-banking
Operator · Moniepoint (Google-backed)
2.3m-strong agent network; personal banking app launched 2023.
Moniepoint
Kuda
neobank
Operator · Kuda Bank
Kuda
Acceptance
- POS terminals
- 2.4M
- POS per million people
- 10.3k
- QR acceptance
- NIBSS QR (NQR) is the national standard, interoperable across banks and wallets since 2021
Source · Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS)