Nigeria: mobile payment users 2025

The mobile wallet from Nigeria's Paga is expected to reach a number of users by 2025 that is higher than that of four other wallets combined. Paga is regarded as the country's biggest fintech, as it was responsible for over two billion U.S. dollars of transactions in 2020. This follows after an early adoption of mobile payments in the 2010s within Nigeria, fueled by regulatory changes from the Central Bank of Nigeria which created an instant payment infrastructure. In more recent years, however, the country's central bank faced increasing criticism for its broader mobile payment policies. For instance, MTN and Airtel - some of the country's leading telecom carriers - did not receive mobile banking licenses years after applying for them. In early 2021, also, the central bank banned cryptocurrencies within Nigeria.

Number of users of selected mobile wallets in Nigeria in 2020, with forecasts from 2021 to 2025 (in millions)

Characteristic	Paga	Opay	MTN MoMoPay	KongaPay	PalmPay
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-

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Release date

October 2021

More information

Region

Nigeria

Survey time period

May 2021

Special properties

The source does not provide any information regarding consumers using more than one app at the same time. It may, therefore, be that the total users of all apps combined is higher than the country's population

Supplementary notes

The source explicitly states that "we look (...) only for open wallets, ie those that have the ability to make payments on multiple sites, rather than in reference to an ability to transfer funds between different wallets. Thus we do not focus on transactions conducted via cards stored by a retailer purely for use on that retailer’s website or mobile app."

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