How did you convince your customers to trust a new financial product when established players already existed?
We knew early on that we weren’t just asking people to try another financial app. We were asking them to trust us with their money and livelihoods. Trust is not something you can easily build or buy through catchy advertisements. When established institutions have owned the market for decades, people are naturally hesitant to move their hard-earned money to a new name.
Instead of asking people to change how they live or learn a complicated new way of banking, we built around the habits and platforms they already use and trust every day. People already know how to send text messages, voice notes or photos on WhatsApp. We made those familiar actions the entry point for personal banking.
Financial services should adapt to people, not force people to adapt to financial services.
The same applies to business clients. Small business owners, vendors and sole proprietors don’t want to spend hours learning heavy accounting tools or juggling disconnected banking portals just to collect payments. By bringing business tools into channels merchants already use, such as WhatsApp and web links, we reduced the barrier to entry. Building around familiar behaviour gives people the confidence to start without feeling like they’re taking a huge leap.
What other things did you have to get right before pursuing aggressive growth?
Before fast growth, our basic promise had to work consistently. In financial services, you only get so many chances to make a first impression. If someone wants to transfer money, pay a bill, send an invoice or process payroll, that transaction has to be reliable.
We also had to make the technology easy to understand. Customers shouldn’t need to understand artificial intelligence or complex financial architecture to use a modern financial service. They should be able to say what they need naturally and understand what action was taken. For business owners, it meant proving the product could support daily operations without exposing revenue to unnecessary risk. Staff needed to help with invoicing and sales without access to core funds.
Growth couldn’t simply mean thousands of accounts. It had to mean people successfully using the product for their daily needs, feeling safe, and choosing to come back.
How does building around familiar customer behaviour influence trust?
Familiarity removes a lot of doubt and fear. When people meet a new financial product they ask: Is this safe? Will my money go through? What if something goes wrong? Do I even know how to use this?
My own story started with my eyesight. I’m short-sighted, and I used to struggle to read account numbers at the supermarket checkout. Sometimes I’d walk away without buying anything because it was too stressful. So I wanted to build something anyone could use: people like me, older people, and people not comfortable with technology.
Type it, send a voice note, or take a picture of an account number. WhatsApp is something even our elders use every day.
Use Nigerian languages, including Pidgin, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.
There’s no strict format. Even with a typo, or if you phrase something in your own way, the system can still understand you.
When an action feels like something you’ve done a thousand times, you stop being afraid of it. But that simplicity still has to be backed by the right compliance and security standards.
When you combine ease of use with underlying security, familiarity can become trust.
What signals told you customers were moving from trying the product to actually trusting it?
The biggest proof wasn’t that people were creating accounts. It was how much they relied on the product for everyday financial needs. New users usually test a financial app with small amounts: a little airtime, a tiny transfer, just to see if it works. True trust happens when those same users start using the platform for regular financial activity.
We saw customers move from test transfers to routine bills, and merchants begin using the platform for daily transactions.
Active users within one year of launch, largely through existing customers and merchants referring others.
Total transactions processed, plus over ₦1.4 billion in crypto deposits in eight months.
Those are important milestones, but the more meaningful signal is the behaviour underneath them: people continue to come back and use the product for increasingly important financial activities.
In finance, you often see trust in what people do long before they say it out loud.