Is fintech becoming a slur?
Selling airtime is fintech's Murphy's Law
If you missed Friday’s newsletter about Gokada’s life-or-death $200k raise, catch up here.
It’s been four years since Nigeria launched the eNaira with the deeply unoriginal slogan: “Same Naira, more possibilities”, shamelessly ripping off borrowing GTCO’s “Same Orange, More Range.”
If it doesn’t feel like the eNaira has been around for years, that’s because when products fail to gain traction, they enter a weird limbo where time stands still. Two, five, or even eight years can pass, and it all feels the same.
Launched under the Buhari administration and hailed as Africa’s first Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the eNaira flopped early. In 2022, it processed a measly $10 million. Over 95% of the wallets created were inactive. By 2023, the eNaira was irrelevant and mostly forgotten. I’ll get into why in a second.
But now, the Central Bank of Nigeria is considering another crack at pushing the eNaira, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversations. The thinking? The eNaira was a good idea, just poorly executed.
To understand what they mean by “good idea,” let’s rewind. The eNaira was meant to solve two problems:
Financial inclusion—dragging the unbanked into digital finance (only 52% of Nigerian adults have bank accounts).
Cross-border payments—cue your favourite remittance startup’s pitch deck on how it’s too expensive to “send money back home.”
There are several brilliant articles on why eNaira failed that you can read here, here and here. But here’s one excerpt from one of those articles I particularly enjoyed:
“At the time the concept of the eNaira was introduced, Nigerians had already embraced private digital payment solutions, such as mobile banking apps, fintech platforms, and established mobile money systems, which were perceived as more efficient and reliable. There were no compelling incentives for individuals or businesses to transition to the eNaira, particularly when other digital payment systems offered more benefits and ease of use.”
It always comes down to the obvious question: can you distribute (insert product name of choice) at scale? It’s the same question asked about Paystack’s Zap: Great product, but can it break through?
That’s this week’s reminder that B2C is the ghetto.
What are these B2B businesses seeing in B2C that we’re missing?
Thanks to the growing consensus that every app in Nigeria eventually starts selling airtime (just like every Lagos coffee shop eventually pivots to selling jollof rice), ‘fintech’ may very well become a slur.
Enter PaidHR. Typically a B2B company helping businesses manage HR and payroll, the startup announced a wallet feature last week. That single product tweak triggered enough chatter that they had to clarify to a publication: We are not a fintech.
Too late.
The new wallet allows peer-to-peer transfers between colleagues—small, useful, and just fintech enough to raise eyebrows. From a business perspective, it makes sense.
PaidHR isn’t cheap, and they don’t intend to compete on price. So if they can make money on value-added services like airtime sales or P2P fees, that offsets costs and opens the door to concessionary pricing.
As Nnanna and I discussed, there are some upsides:
They’re using B2C tools—wallets, referrals, peer transfers—to drive B2B growth.
After raising money, they need to show traction and scale. Fast.
If you’re an investor, it’s a smart play. If you’re an operator? You’re nervous. B2C is unpredictable, margin-thin, and can dilute the quality and focus of a product.
What if this is just a referral loop disguised as a wallet feature? A way to turn individual users into sales agents for a B2B platform.
But here’s what’s keeping me up at night: What are these B2B businesses seeing in B2C that the rest of us aren’t? Maybe it’s the dream of scale. Maybe it’s just vibes. Time will tell.
Parting shot: This weekend, I read that CBEX—a “leading crypto exchange that uses AI to make their trades 99.9% accurate”—has paused payouts. Look, if there was an AI that accurate at trading, you wouldn't be hearing about it.
Sorry to everyone who lost money, but a Ponzi was always going to ride the AI wave eventually.
See you next Friday!
Don’t forget to like this post, leave a comment, or write me an email. I love hearing from you.
Hi Muyiwa,
Thank you for your article and the mention of the eNaira and the challenges it has faced since launch. While I agree that user adoption has been limited due to the prevalence of existing digital channels like mobile and USSD banking, I believe the more fundamental reason for the eNaira’s struggles lies in a deeper misalignment of its business model and execution strategy.
At its core, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) took an unusual path by attempting to play both the role of issuer and distributor of the eNaira. This contrasts sharply with the traditional Naira distribution model, where the CBN mints the currency, but licensed financial institutions handle distribution, customer relationship, and innovation. This model has proven to be robust, scalable, and efficient, yet it was largely set aside in the initial rollout of the eNaira.
Instead, the CBN chose to launch a consumer-facing app and assumed the operational complexities of a B2C retail model—an area outside its core competence. Financial institutions were brought in later, almost as an afterthought, and in a highly restricted capacity that limited their incentive or ability to drive meaningful adoption. This approach disrupted the existing ecosystem rather than building on it.
Moreover, while the CBN positioned the eNaira as “the same Naira with more possibilities,” the reality was quite the opposite. The eNaira, by regulatory design, was stripped of some fundamental characteristics that make digital money useful—most notably, its inability to generate interest or be used in investment vehicles. In contrast, traditional bank-held Naira retains these essential financial properties, giving individuals and businesses far more flexibility and incentive to keep their funds within the existing banking system.
In many ways, it appears the eNaira was rushed to market more as a symbolic leap into the CBDC space than as a carefully planned, user-centric innovation. By prioritizing speed over usability and ecosystem collaboration, the project missed the opportunity to harness the strengths of Nigeria’s already vibrant digital financial infrastructure.
A more inclusive and collaborative rollout—one that leveraged the distribution expertise of banks and fintechs—could have dramatically changed the adoption trajectory of the eNaira. Instead of competing with banks and fintechs, the CBN could have empowered them, creating a network effect that benefited everyone in the financial ecosystem, especially the end users.
Thank you