Moniepoint Inc., Nigeria’s definitive platform for small businesses and Africa’s all-in-one financial ecosystem, today released its 2025 Year in Review, marking a decade of “financial happiness” and a transformative year of growth.

Moniepoint

Highlighting its role as the backbone of Nigeria’s entrepreneurial economy with over 6 million active businesses, the company revealed that its microfinance bank has now disbursed over ₦1 trillion in credit to thousands of businesses from provision stores and supermarkets to building materials sellers.

It is worthy to note that on average these businesses experienced growth by more than 36% after accessing credit, signposting its primacy as a transformational growth level and instrument of deepening shared prosperity.

Moniepoint uses alternative data points that include transaction histories, business patterns and payment behaviours in a bid to accommodate what traditional credit scoring misses to drive financial inclusion and access to credit.

The company’s 2025 performance reinforces its role as a critical financial infrastructure which not only supports the Nigerian economy, but also impacts everyday lives, creating immense value.

Founded in 2015 by Tosin Eniolorunda and Felix Ike, Moniepoint Inc (formerly known as TeamApt Inc) has established itself as the leading financial platform for Nigeria’s vast network of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), offering an integrated suite of services, including digital payments, business bank accounts, credit, foreign exchange (FX), and management tools.

During the year, as Nigeria’s largest merchant acquirer, now powering 8 out of every 10 in-person payments made across the country, Moniepoint MFB, the banking and payments subsidiary, processed ₦412 trillion in transaction value handling more than 14 billion transactions. This clearly suggests that Moniepoint is well-positioned to play a greater role in Nigeria’s steady march towards a trillion dollar economy by 2030.

“Our journey has been one of intentional evolution,” said Tosin Eniolorunda, Group CEO and Founder of Moniepoint Inc. “What started as a passion to solve overlooked problems has evolved into a platform powering the dreams of millions.

“As 83% of employment in Africa exists in the informal economy, our mission to create financial happiness is an operational mandate that guides our product development, our market expansion, and our capital allocation decisions.”

Beaming with enthusiasm, Eniolorunda continues, “Yet for all we have accomplished, we approach our second decade with the clarity that our work remains unfinished.

“As we enter this next chapter, we do so with strengthened conviction in our strategy, deepened partnerships with world-class institutional investors, and an organisation scaled to deliver on Africa’s entrepreneurial potential.

“The infrastructure we have built over the past decade provides the foundation. The journey is far from over, but our resolve has never been stronger. To our partners, our customers, and our team: thank you for a decade of impact. We are just getting started.”

In 2025, Moniepoint Inc. reached a series of critical inflexion points, highlighted by the successful completion of its Series C funding round, which raised over $200 million in equity financing from leading institutional investors, including Development Partners International, Google’s Africa Investment Fund, Visa, the International Finance Corporation, and Verod Capital.

The year also marked the launch of MonieWorld in the United Kingdom, extending Moniepoint’s platform to serve the African diaspora by strengthening key remittance corridors and laying the foundation for the delivery of comprehensive cross-border financial services.

Moniepoint MFB re-launched its savings product in a firm demonstration of the company’s commitment toward its’ oft stated mantra of providing financial happiness. Data reveals in terms of savings behavioral patterns, the majority of users choose to save on a daily basis, with focus across business operations (24%), rent (16.5%), and education (10%) representing top savings priorities.

The launch of Moniebook and the acquisition of a national Microfinance Bank license for Moniepoint MFB further expand the company’s regulated capabilities and product depth.

TeamApt Ltd, the switching and processing subsidiary of Moniepoint Inc., also achieved major regulatory and operational milestones in 2025 that have solidified its position in the global payments landscape. After a rigorous certification process, the company successfully secured licenses from Mastercard and Visa to act as a processor and acquirer for these global card schemes..

This strategic move allows TeamApt to support international card payments directly and offer these critical switching services to other businesses across the continent.

Monnify, the web payment gateway processed N25 trillion in the period under review, demonstrating remarkable resilience and industry confidence firmly positioning it for more business-to-business transactions.

Moniepoint’s impact extended beyond banking into critical social interventions even as the company partnered with the Federal Government to support the Rice Intervention Programme, reaching nearly 850,000 beneficiaries, and worked with the Kaduna State Government in grants disbursement to vulnerable citizens.

Through these initiatives, Moniepoint continues to build the infrastructure required to unlock Africa’s entrepreneurial potential, positioning itself as a trusted partner for the delivery of large-scale economic empowerment programmes.

As Moniepoint Inc. enters its second decade, its well chronicled decade-long evolution from a backend technology provider to a household name, directly complements the Nigerian government’s vision of a more inclusive, data-driven, and productive financial landscape. To read more about the 2025 Year in Review Report:, visit http://2025.moniepoint.com

As the world observes Data Privacy Week under the theme “Take Control of Your Data,” Paradigm Initiative (PIN) has commended countries that enacted or strengthened data protection laws in the past year to protect citizens’ privacy rights.

PIN

The week marks the January 28, 1981, signing of Convention 108, the first international treaty on data privacy and protection.

PIN spotlighted Djibouti, The Gambia, and Burundi for passing data protection laws in June, September 2025, and January 2026, respectively. It also recognised Botswana, whose law took effect in January 2025, and Algeria, which amended its legislation in July 2025 to mandate Data Protection Officers.

“We applaud these strides,” PIN said, urging data protection authorities across Africa to prioritise implementation and enforcement to uphold data subjects’ rights.

In Nigeria, PIN’s advocacy has yielded key wins. In 2024, it challenged unauthorised websites selling sensitive personal and financial data of Nigerians for as low as N100. Strategic litigation forced United Bank for Africa (UBA) PLC to pay N8 million to customer Miss Folashade Molehin for unlawfully opening a domiciliary account without her consent.

In 2025, the Federal High Court in Abuja ruled against Domino’s Pizza (operated by Eat’n’Go), awarding Chukwunweike Araka Akosa N3 million for unsolicited direct marketing via his phone. The court deemed it a violation of Section 37 of the 1999 Constitution and Sections 25 and 26 of the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023. The case originated via PIN’s Ripoti platform, which documents and redresses digital rights abuses across Africa, offering pro-bono legal aid.

Yet challenges persist. PIN warned that countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, South Sudan, Sudan, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, and Western Sahara lack robust laws, exposing citizens to grave privacy risks.

It called on Liberia, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, and Libya to urgently enact data protection frameworks.

By Moliehi Molekoa, Managing Director of Magna Carta Reputation Management Consultants and PRISA Board Member

The start of a new year often brings optimism, new strategies, and renewed ambition. However, for the public relations and reputation management industry, the past year ended not only with optimism but also with hard-earned clarity.

Moliehi Molekoa

2025 was more than a challenging year. It was a reckoning and a stress test for operating models, procurement practices, and, most importantly, the foundation of client–agency partnerships. For the C-suite, this is not solely an agency issue.

The year revealed a more fundamental challenge: a partnership problem that, if left unaddressed, can easily erode the very reputations, trust, and resilience agencies are hired to protect. What has emerged is not disillusionment, but the need for a clearer understanding of where established ways of working no longer reflect the reality they are meant to support.

The uncomfortable truth we keep avoiding

Public relations agencies are businesses, not cost centres or expandable resources. They are not informal extensions of internal teams, lacking the protection, stability, or benefits those teams receive. They are businesses.

Yet, across markets, agencies are often expected to operate under conditions that would raise immediate concerns in any boardroom:

• Unclear and constantly shifting scope

• Short-term contracts paired with long-term expectations

• Sixty-, ninety-, even 120-day payment terms

• Procurement-led pricing pressure divorced from delivery realities

• Pitch processes that consume months of senior talent time, often with no feedback, timelines, or accountability

If these conditions would concern you within your own organisation, they should also concern you regarding the partner responsible for your reputation.

Growth on paper, pressure in practice

On the surface, the industry appears healthy. Global market valuations continue to rise. Demand for reputation management, stakeholder engagement, crisis preparedness, and strategic counsel has never been higher.

However, beneath this top-line growth lies the uncomfortable reality: fewer than half of agencies expect meaningful profit growth, even as workloads increase and expectations rise.

This disconnect is significant. It indicates an industry being asked to deliver more across additional platforms, at greater speed, with deeper insight, and with higher risk exposure, all while absorbing increased commercial uncertainty.

For African agencies in particular, this pressure is intensified by factors such as volatile currencies, rising talent costs, fragile data infrastructure, and procurement models adopted from economies with fundamentally different conditions. This is not a complaint. It is reality.

This pressure is not one-sided. Many clients face constraints ranging from procurement mandates and short-term cost controls to internal capacity gaps, which increasingly shift responsibility outward. But pressure transfer is not the same as partnership, and left unmanaged, it creates long-term risk for both parties.

The pitching problem no one wants to own

Agencies are not anti-competition. Pitches sharpen thinking and drive excellence. What agencies increasingly challenge is how pitching is done.

Across markets, agencies participate in dozens of pitches each year, with success rates well below 20%. Senior leaders frequently invest unpaid hours, often with limited information, tight timelines, and evaluation criteria that prioritise cost over value.

And then, too often, dead silence, no feedback, no communication about delays, and a lack of decency in providing detailed feedback on the decision drivers.

In any other supplier relationship, this would not meet basic governance standards. In a profession built on intellectual capital, it suggests that expertise is undervalued.

This is also where independent pitch consultants become increasingly important and valuable if clients choose this route to help facilitate their pitch process. Their role in the process is not to advocate for agencies but to act as neutral custodians of fairness, realism, and governance. When used well, they help clients align ambition with timelines, scope, and budget, and ensure transparency and feedback that ultimately lead to better decision-making.

“More for less” is not a strategy

A particularly damaging expectation is the belief that agencies can sustainably deliver enterprise-level outcomes on limited budgets, often while dedicating nearly full-time senior resources. This is not efficiency. It is misalignment.

No executive would expect a business unit to thrive while under-resourced, overexposed, and cash-constrained. Yet agencies are often required to operate under these conditions while remaining accountable for outcomes that affect market confidence, stakeholder trust, and brand equity.

Here is a friendly reminder: reputation management is not a commodity. It is risk management.

It is value creation. It also requires investment that matches its significance.

A necessary reset

As leadership teams plan for growth, resilience, and relevance, there is both an opportunity and a responsibility to reset how agency partnerships are structured.

That reset looks like:

• Contracts that balance flexibility and sustainability

• Payment terms that reflect mutual dependency

• Pitch processes that respect time, talent, and transparency for all parties

• Scopes that align ambition with available budgets

• Relationships based on professional parity rather than power imbalance

This reset also requires discipline on the agency side – clearer articulation of value, sharper scoping, and greater transparency about how senior expertise is deployed. Partnership is not protectionism; it is mutual accountability.

The Leadership Question That Matters

The question for the C-suite is quite simple:

If your agency mirrored your internal standards of governance, fairness, and accountability, would you still be comfortable with how the relationship is structured?

If the answer is no, then change is not only necessary but also strategic. Because strong brands are built on strong partnerships. Strong partnerships endure only when both sides are recognised, respected, and resourced as businesses in their own right.

The agencies that succeed and the brands that truly thrive will be those that recognise this early and act deliberately.