Moniepoint, a fintech giant that operates one of Nigerias largest agent networks, has released its first informal economy report, detailing key insights into the informal economy such as financial habits and digital payments trends. The fintech spoke to over 2 million Nigerian businesses that signed up on its platform between 2019 and 2024 and excluded data from the thousands of agents
Here are five interesting things we learned from the report.
Cards dominate offline paymentsOf the 2 million businesses Moniepoint interviewed, about 80 prefer card payments to transfers for in-person transactions. This is in contrast to online payments dominated by online transfers, according to figures from the central bank. Digital payments enjoyed its best year ever in 2023, after an ill-thought cashless policy that made cash scarce forced many Nigerians to use digital means of payment. Despite a reversal of the policy, Nigerians still stuck to digital payments and companies like Moniepoint which processed 5.2 billion transactions, quickly became part of daily life.
