After years of taking part in catch-up in Nigeria’s cell cash market, Airtel Nigeria is betting on incentives and bodily distribution to power relevance for its cell cash arm, SmartCash.
For the reason that Central Financial institution of Nigeria (CBN) launched Cost Service Banks (PSBs) in 2018, permitting telcos to supply restricted monetary providers beneath strict regulatory guidelines, telecom-led fintechs have struggled to translate telecom scale into monetary dominance.
Regardless of its 60.89 million subscribers and place as Nigeria’s second-largest telco, Airtel’s SmartCash stays a marginal participant in cell cash. SmartCash has simply 2.2 million customers in Nigeria and generated $6 million in income as of December 2025.
These numbers are far off from fintech heavyweights like OPay and PalmPay, which already dominate on a regular basis funds, transfers, and deposits. PalmPay’s income rose to $63.90 million in 2023, a 31,850% enhance from 2020.
Cellular cash is Nigeria’s fastest-growing monetary providers phase. Transactions hit ₦20.71 trillion ($13.49 billion) in Q1 2025, in keeping with knowledge from Nigeria Inter-Financial institution Settlement System (NIBSS)—a 1,518.64% soar from Q1 2021.
Regulation has been a significant structural constraint. PSBs can not provide loans, face greater capital necessities, and entered the market late. In a latest CBN fintech report, trade lenders argued that lending restrictions positioned on PSBs have restricted their competitiveness and development potential.
Airtel’s reboot technique
On Airtel Africa’s fiscal Q1 2026 earnings name in July 2025, group chief govt officer Sunil Taldar mentioned the corporate would proceed to depend on its model, agent community, digital capabilities, and current buyer base to carve out a worthwhile place in Nigeria’s cell cash market whereas acknowledging that the market was aggressive.
At a media briefing on February 5, 2026, Airtel Nigeria’s CEO, Dinesh Balsingh, expanded on Smartcash’s development technique whereas admitting that the product’s attain stays comparatively small.
“These are the three massive propositions that we have now rolled out. Free transfers, money again, and financial savings,” Balsingh informed TechCabal. “We’re going to be launching a marketing campaign round SmartCash. Simply on the pockets aspect of the enterprise.”
All transfers on the SmartCash platform are at present free, and customers obtain cashback on airtime recharge, invoice funds, and pockets transactions. Transaction cashbacks goal to reward stickiness, and it’s not unique. Fintech gamers like OPay proceed to supply transaction cashbacks regardless of their scale.
To construct deposits, SmartCash can be providing a flat 15% annual rate of interest on financial savings, with no tiers, caps, or thresholds. Whatever the quantity, funds positioned within the saver’s pockets earn the identical charge.
Not like tiered financial savings merchandise frequent throughout fintech platforms, SmartCash says its mannequin removes complexity and friction by providing a single, uniform curiosity construction: “No matter you set into your saver’s pockets offers you 15% curiosity, no questions requested for the yr,” Balsingh informed TechCabal.
Past incentives, SmartCash can be increasing its infrastructure layer. The platform mentioned it’s now built-in with a number of banks and monetary establishments, enabling pockets transfers and inter-bank transactions throughout its community.
Bodily distribution stays a core pillar of its enlargement technique. Balsingh mentioned Airtel has deployed practically 60,000 point-of-sale (PoS) terminals throughout agent retailers, supermarkets, and service provider places.
This pales as compared with fintechs reminiscent of OPay and Moniepoint which have constructed intensive terminal networks to seize market share. Moniepoint alone has over a million deployed terminals, whereas the variety of energetic PoS terminals in Nigeria grew from beneath 600,000 in 2021 to almost six million in 2025, pushed largely by fintech enlargement.
SmartCash’s PoS terminals are primarily utilized in Airtel’s retail ecosystem, although the corporate says it plans to scale utilization throughout broader service provider networks.
In 2025, Airtel additionally introduced plans to launch a digital card and introduce extra use instances to deepen adoption. However telecom-led fintechs have struggled in Nigeria. MTN’s fintech arm has leaned closely on airtime lending to develop income to ₦131.62 billion ($97.23 million) within the first 9 months of 2025.
Their influence continues to pale as compared with the success of M-Pesa in Kenya, and even Airtel’s personal cell cash success in East Africa.
In its The State of the Trade Report on Cellular Cash (2024), GSMA, the trade physique for telcos, argued that Nigerian telcos’ scale, capital base, and superior applied sciences will ultimately give them an edge within the cell cash race. It, nonetheless, warned that their means to scale will rely upon extra than simply incentives however on better regulatory flexibility, which has helped in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana.
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