Moniepoint Scale Grows As SME Lending Crosses Trillion
Moniepoint has reached a ten-year operational milestone, marking sustained growth and increasing relevance in Nigeria’s small business finance landscape. As part of its 2025 performance review, the firm reported that its microfinance bank has now disbursed over N1 trillion in credit to micro and small enterprises across the country in the past year, underscoring a significant commitment to financing underserved business segments.
This financing milestone reflects a deliberate shift toward filling critical credit gaps in Nigeria’s informal and small and medium enterprise (SME) sectors. These segments are often unable to access formal bank lending due to limited collateral, irregular revenue flows, and risk profiles that traditional lenders deem unviable. Moniepoint’s microfinance unit has made measurable inroads into this financing shortfall, advancing working capital, equipment purchases, and business growth opportunities for a wide range of enterprises.
The company now serves more than six million active businesses, spanning neighbourhood provision stores, supermarkets, building material suppliers, and other micro and small operations that form the backbone of local commerce. Its broad service footprint underlines a strategy that blends digital payments infrastructure with credit access, creating an integrated ecosystem for business operations.
As Nigeria’s largest merchant acquirer, Moniepoint processes a dominant share of in-person payments, powering about 80 percent of such transactions nationwide. This payment processing capacity not only strengthens the firm’s market position but also generates rich transactional data that supports credit risk assessment and decisioning models, key advantages over legacy financial institutions that rely on traditional credit histories.
Group Chief Executive Officer and Founder Tosin Eniolorunda described the company’s trajectory as intentionally evolutionary. He noted that Moniepoint began with the mission to address overlooked financial needs and has since scaled to support millions of business owners with tools that extend beyond credit. According to him, the informal economy, which accounts for the majority of employment in Africa, demands financial solutions tailored to its unique dynamics, and Moniepoint’s products and strategy are anchored in that understanding.
Despite achieving significant scale, Eniolorunda emphasised that the firm views its first decade as a foundation rather than a destination. He stated that the company approaches its second decade with clarity about remaining challenges and a strengthened conviction in its strategic direction, including deepening partnerships with global institutional investors.
From an analytical standpoint, Moniepoint’s model demonstrates how fintech platforms can reconfigure traditional financial intermediation. By leveraging digital payments networks and proprietary data analytics, the firm mitigates elements of credit risk that have historically discouraged lending to micro and small enterprises. This approach allows for more responsive credit allocation and potentially lower default rates, while also broadening financial inclusion.
However, broader structural challenges persist. Nigeria’s SME sector continues to face systemic barriers including high interest rates, inconsistent regulatory frameworks, and macroeconomic volatility. The substantial credit shortfall in the SME space highlights that private sector initiatives like Moniepoint’s will need to operate alongside policy interventions to effect structural change and sustainable economic growth.
Moniepoint’s tenth anniversary and N1 trillion credit disbursement milestone signify a measurable impact on SME financing in Nigeria. The firm’s analytical use of payment data, combined with an integrated fintech strategy, positions it as a significant catalyst for SME inclusion, even as larger systemic reforms remain essential for broad-based economic deepening.
