When Tosin Eniolorunda introduced Dennis Ajalie into TeamApt as a senior enterprise improvement officer in 2018, the corporate was nonetheless constructing software program for monetary establishments.
TeamApt had, in Ajalie’s phrases, “two and a half merchandise,” which had been largely targeted on serving to banks reconcile the messy actuality of guide monitoring.
The 12 months Ajalie joined TeamApt, the fintech sector in Nigeria was nonetheless taking form. That 12 months, startups within the area raised a report $103.4 million, however regulation remained unsure. A draft coverage from the Central Financial institution of Nigeria (CBN) proposed new licensing necessities that signalled tighter oversight and better capital thresholds for operators.
Though fintechs had been central to the CBN’s monetary inclusion and cashless ambitions, the sector had no devoted regulatory framework and was nonetheless evolving, in accordance with international advisory agency PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
Nigeria’s fintech sector has since scaled quickly, elevating $520 million in fairness funding in 2024 alone, whereas the Central Financial institution has emerged because the de facto regulator of the ecosystem. What was as soon as an rising area is now central to how cash strikes within the nation
Moniepoint Group, which Eniolorunda now leads, is without doubt one of the largest SME-focused fintechs in Nigeria and not too long ago raised $200 million. Ajalie, who can also be a software program developer, now leads TeamApt as its chief govt officer, working it as a subsidiary throughout the Moniepoint group.
Collectively, they’ve reworked what started as a bank-focused software program firm into one thing much more strategic: an infrastructure enterprise that sits immediately contained in the stream of cash.
From instruments to rails
Digital fee runs on an invisible infrastructure.
Each switch or card fee passes by means of switches, gateways, processors, and settlement methods that join banks, fintechs, and retailers.
Based in 2015 as a software program answer supplier for banks, TeamApt’s early objective was to bridge the hole between the front-end purposes prospects interacted with, cellular apps, and level of sale (PoS) terminals, and the advanced back-end methods banks relied on to course of transactions.
Within the early days, Eniolorunda believed that if the corporate might construct merchandise that might sit between folks and banks, it might have received.
“Cash and happiness are elementary to human existence. On the centre of cash and happiness is the banks as a result of that’s the place folks save their cash. We believed that if we might construct expertise options that implement these correctly, we might have received as a result of it’s not going to alter until Jesus comes,” Eniolorunda stated on this 2018 function.
One in every of TeamApt’s early merchandise, Olympos, launched in 2016, was an buying answer to assist banks automate fee collections and their buying course of, particularly for PoS retailers.
Earlier than this, each failed PoS transaction or mismatched switch required folks to resolve.
As smartphone adoption elevated, the corporate added a cellular app element to the product and later advanced it into Moneytor by 2018, a digital banking service for monetary establishments to trace transactions with internet and cellular interfaces.
Industrial banks used Moneytor to energy cellular merchandise, together with Sterling Financial institution’s OnePay and Unity Financial institution’s Unifi app.
“We did some person interface (UI) work with FCMB and Stanbic,” Ajalie recalled. “Virtually all of the banks had been on the buying facet. We labored on cellular apps as effectively.”
However Olympus and Moneytor weren’t TeamApt’s first merchandise.
Earlier than digital banking turned extensively automated, banks relied closely on operations groups to manually observe transactions, match incoming funds to the right prospects, resolve failed or duplicate transfers, and guarantee correct account balances.
TeamApt constructed Profectus in 2016 to automate this course of.
“It was the primary product that we launched,” Ajalie stated. “It was not simply profitable in Nigeria—banks like Zenith, FCMB, and Sterling used it. It was additionally utilized in Ghana.”
Whereas banks are its present core prospects, TeamApt’s first consumer was Pc Warehouse Group, a Nigerian info expertise companies and infrastructure agency.
“To start out, we closed a take care of Pc Warehouse Group to construct a fee answer for them, and that’s how we began bootstrapping,” Eniolorunda stated in 2019.
After this, Constancy Financial institution, a Nigerian tier one financial institution, turned its first financial institution buyer.
These early merchandise gave TeamApt visibility into how cash really strikes throughout Nigeria’s banking system—how transactions move by means of switches, how banks match incoming funds to prospects, and the way failures, reversals, and delays are resolved behind the scenes.
Changing into the rail
As a substitute of simply constructing instruments for banks, TeamApt wished to sit down throughout the transaction stream itself and constructed its fee switching engine, AptPay.
The engine was prepared in 2018, but it surely didn’t go reside till TeamApt acquired a switching licence from the Central Financial institution of Nigeria in April 2019. This began the transition of the corporate from a business-to-business software-as-a-service supplier to a direct participant within the nation’s fee stream.
Switches sit on the centre of digital funds, routing transactions between banks, fintechs, and fee networks. Whoever operates the change sits at a essential level within the monetary system.
However coming into that layer meant taking over entrenched incumbents.
For interbank transfers, the Nigeria Inter-Financial institution Settlement System (NIBSS) dominates by means of its NIP platform. Integration with NIP is successfully obligatory for monetary establishments, making it one of the crucial highly effective items of infrastructure within the ecosystem.
“We had incumbents,” Ajalie stated. “For account transfers, you had NIBSS and their NIP answer. For NIP transactions, integration is virtually obligatory for monetary establishments. So we had been going up in opposition to the juggernauts.”
The problem pressured the corporate to rethink its technique.
As a substitute of specializing in massive industrial banks, TeamApt turned its consideration to different monetary establishments (OFIs), together with microfinance banks and fintech startups.
“We realised that down the road OFIs would turn out to be systemic to the business,” Ajalie stated.
On the time, nonetheless, these establishments generated comparatively little transaction quantity.
Moniepoint: fixing distribution and quantity
In 2019, TeamApt launched Moniepoint as a cellular cash and company banking platform focusing on Nigeria’s casual financial system. That 12 months, it raised $5.5 million in a Collection A spherical, after years of bootstrapping.
By a community of PoS terminals, Moniepoint brokers might provide fundamental banking companies, together with money withdrawals, deposits, and transfers, to folks with restricted entry to conventional financial institution branches.
By constructing its personal distribution community of brokers and retailers, TeamApt ensured {that a} rising share of transactions might be originated, routed, and processed by itself infrastructure. As a substitute of competing for quantity from banks and fintechs, it generated its personal, and saved it inside its ecosystem.
It now has over a million energetic PoS terminals. Nigeria had 5.90 million energetic terminals as of March 2025.
Moniepoint was not one other product layered on high of TeamApt’s infrastructure; it turned a distribution engine for TeamApt’s infrastructure.
By 2020, processing as much as $7 billion month-to-month in over 120 million transactions. At present, it processes $250 billion yearly from over 14 billion transactions whereas serving over 20 million companies and people.
The digital account breakthrough
Whereas constructing Moniepoint, TeamApt developed digital accounts. The thought emerged whereas making an attempt to resolve a easy reconciliation downside.
“Tosin was making an attempt to resolve an issue of paying property dues,” Ajalie stated.
Residents would switch funds to a shared checking account, however there was usually no simple solution to establish the payer for every fee.
To unravel this, TeamApt created a system that generated distinctive account numbers for every payer. Funds despatched to these accounts might robotically establish the sender and reconcile the transaction.
“We saved on plumbing, tooling, and retooling,” Ajalie stated. “We had a hackathon at a resort with some workers members. That was the place we created the digital account engine.”
Working with Providus Financial institution, Nigeria’s ninth-largest financial institution by property, the system was launched and rapidly adopted by fintech startups like PiggyVest and Cowrywise.
What started as a workaround turned foundational infrastructure.
Digital accounts reworked unstructured financial institution transfers into traceable, programmable funds, making it simpler for fintech corporations to gather funds at scale and handle reconciliation effectively.
The product advanced into Monnify in 2019, TeamApt’s fee gateway and collections platform that enables formal companies to gather funds seamlessly by means of internet and cellular.
In 2025, Monnify processed ₦25 trillion ($18.03 billion). This pales compared to the ₦412 trillion ($297 billion) Moniepoint processed in 2023.
TeamApt’s CEO defined that the disparity is predicted as a result of Moniepoint serves the casual market.
Moniepoint’s scale has come from making itself indispensable to each day commerce, with its PoS terminals, on the spot settlements, and company banking companies woven into how these companies function. It has turn out to be one of many largest fee suppliers for tens of millions of Nigeria’s micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which contribute round 45% of the nation’s Gross Home Product (GDP) and supply greater than 80% of jobs.
Whereas Moniepoint’s quantity will depend on PoS terminals, that are the fastest-growing fee mode within the nation, Monnify’s quantity will depend on folks participating with it by means of a pc or cellphone.
Changing into the infrastructure behind Moniepoint
As Moniepoint grew, its model started to overshadow the corporate behind it.
“Moniepoint was presupposed to be the engine for the casual sector,” Ajalie stated. “It turned the larger model, and this necessitated the large change.”
TeamApt reorganised, positioning itself because the infrastructure layer chargeable for switching, processing, and integrations, whereas Moniepoint turned the first customer-facing model. In 2023, TeamApt rebranded into the identification of its flagship product, Moniepoint, and have become a subsidiary beneath it.
By then, it had raised a complete of $85.5 million throughout 4 funding rounds.
At present, TeamApt’s infrastructure connects 16 banks and helps transaction flows throughout the broader Moniepoint ecosystem, in accordance with its CEO. These embody tier-one banks, aside from First Financial institution.
“All of these connections to the banks that TeamApt constructed through the years kind a part of the reliability Moniepoint presently provides,” Ajalie stated.
In 2019, TeamApt claimed to have 26 African financial institution purchasers and processed $160 million in month-to-month transactions, in accordance with firm information.
Whereas the infrastructure powers a lot of Moniepoint’s companies, it’s not alone.
“Moniepoint can not depend on a single rail to ship the sort of worth, ease, and reliability that prospects expertise,” Ajalie stated. “However we’re most likely probably the most environment friendly rail that Moniepoint has. This effectivity isn’t just in processing capabilities however in reconciliation capabilities which have been constructed into TeamApt.”
Increasing into international funds
To seize extra worth throughout the fee chain, TeamApt has expanded into card processing.
After receiving certifications from Visa and Mastercard, the corporate can now course of card transactions immediately for retailers and monetary establishments. This locations it amongst a small group of Nigerian gamers, together with Interswitch and Unified Funds, that may domestically course of worldwide card funds.
For Moniepoint, this additionally means its PoS terminals can now settle for international Visa and Mastercard playing cards, enabling higher-value transactions, notably for cross-border funds and worldwide prospects.
Whereas Nigeria’s funds dialog has shifted towards transfers and account-based funds, card volumes stay vital, particularly in service provider funds and cross-border transactions, the place they’re nonetheless the dominant rail.
In 2025, Moniepoint stated its playing cards had been used 1.7 million occasions day by day. Verve, a fee card scheme operated by Nigerian fintech firm Interswitch, grew its variety of issued playing cards to 100 million in 2025.
In response to the CBN, fee card utilization within the nation has advanced when it comes to acceptance, infrastructure, and operational effectivity, particularly with the growth of PoS terminals.
By transferring into card processing, TeamApt is positioning itself to seize a share of that quantity, whereas hedging in opposition to a future the place no single fee rail dominates.
How TeamApt makes cash
TeamApt’s mannequin is constructed on capturing worth at a number of factors within the motion of cash.
Throughout funds, charges are usually cut up between a number of gamers, together with switches, processors, gateways, issuing banks, and networks, every taking a small reduce of each transaction.
For example, a service provider can cost 1.25% of a PoS transaction worth, topic to a most of ₦2,000. However it’s shared among the many issuer (30%), acquirer (32.5%), fee terminal proprietor (25%), native change (5%), and fee terminal service aggregator (7.5%).
Financial institution transfers and collections usually generate decrease, flat charges of lower than 1% shared throughout suppliers.
By working throughout a number of layers, together with collections by means of Monnify, switching infrastructure, and now card processing, TeamApt can take part in a number of elements of that payment stack concurrently.
Individually, every take price is low. However at scale, throughout tens of millions of each day transactions and trillions of naira in annual quantity, these fractions compound into a gentle and defensible income stream.
Constructing on high of the rails
Proudly owning infrastructure creates a second benefit: the power to construct extra monetary companies on high of it.
TeamApt says it’s now increasing into value-added choices similar to direct debits and pensions.
By a partnership with Awabah, a licenced pension agent, casual staff can register for pensions, tokenise their playing cards, and arrange recurring contributions by means of Moniepoint’s community.
“Direct debits might be our main product for 2026,” Ajalie stated. “We need to make it mainstream within the casual sector.”
Direct debits present a safe framework for automated, recurring funds from a buyer’s checking account to a biller. These mandates have to be authorised by the client and allow automated, environment friendly cashless settlement, decreasing guide funds.
As of the primary half of 2024, direct debits accounted for less than 0.44% of the nation’s complete fee quantity.
After practically a decade of constructing fee expertise, TeamApt’s technique is more and more clear: management the infrastructure that strikes cash, after which construct monetary companies on high of it.
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