New Year, Same Chaos: What’s Cooking in 2025?
Dear Nigerian Fintech: Your 2025 Reality Check Has Arrived
Happy (Chinese) New Year and welcome to 2025 the year of the snake.
A few headlines.
A hedge fund is offering its AI chatbot for free, while that of a non-profit costs $200 a month.
America’s Crypto President Donald Trump is back as #47, in the past month, on-chain crime became legal as his son extracted over 1Billion in liquidity from the crypto markets with the launch of their $TRUMP and $MELANIA tokens. Ross Ulbricht is out of jail, and Joe Biden did the crypto industry a massive solid by ensuring SBF remains behind bars.
Masa is back as Sam Altman seems to have finally secured $500 Billion of his much-needed $7 trillion.
While Elon, Sam and Satya were bickering on Twitter on whether $500 Billion is a real number, DeepSeek displaced ChatGPT as the number 1 app on the app store, with its baseline open source model which is as good as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini It was “allegedly” trained on a $5 million budget using outdated NVIDIA chips due to America’s export controls to China.
Despite Jevons Paradox and Gas Law being the most searched terms on the internet at market open on Monday, this announcement and their image generation model launch drowned out Open AI’s Operator launch wiping off 2 Trillion of AI-related value from the stock market in a single day. (The market has recovered, and most of us will still have jobs or learn Chinese for the next 12 months at least)
HSBC shut down Zing its international payments app, Accrue, Juicyway and LemFi raised significant amounts of money to continue doubling down in the FX/Remittance/Stablecoins space, Opeyemi Awoyemi sold another company, famed short seller Hindenburg Research closed its shop (clearing the path to a Flutterwave IPO), AWS announced a switch to receiving payments in NGN.
Elsewhere, the NCC approved tariff hikes for Telcos. Femi Otedola did what Godwin Emefiele couldn’t by sending Oba Otudeko on the run from the EFCC. Access and Zenith Bank each raised ₦350 billion in fully subscribed public offers, while GTCO, falling short at ₦209 billion, needs a supplementary listing. These are Signs that the good old days are gone.
That’s the gist from the last newsletter till now. Let’s start the year with a bang and dive into predictions for 2025:
1. Contactless Payments Will Finally Take Off
Isa Pantami’s policies may have unwittingly killed USSD payments in Nigeria. With increased data tariffs, data will become expensive leading Nigerians to justify and make tradeoffs on their internet usage. Enter alternatives: contactless payments, QR codes, and WhatsApp bots. One of these is primed to replace USSD this year.
2. It Is Time To Buy (a Bank)
Nigerian banks have 12 months to meet the CBN’s new capital requirements. The big boys have wrapped up their capital raises, draining liquidity from the market. With less than 10 banks currently compliant, expect a flurry of last-minute mergers, fundraising, and “unholy alliances” as the March 31, 2026, deadline looms.
3. Executive Level Cleanups At Banks Incoming
First Bank had its cleanup last year. This year, the CBN or shareholders will force similar reckonings at other banks. There are lots of experienced senior executives in the job market. Various market movements mean more will join them.
4. Your Favourite Fintech Will Have Prolonged Downtime
Scaling problems and infrastructure overload are inevitable. Last year, a unicorn was allegedly breached five times, and a few banks faced similar woes. As several Nigerian neo-banks approach or surpass the 10 million customer mark, at least one popular fintech is expected to experience prolonged downtime due to scaling issues and infrastructure overload.
5. E-Commerce Tools For Everyone
My 2024 prediction about Bumpa becoming Nigeria’s Shopify replacement didn’t pan out. 2025 should see a relatively stable exchange rate and cheaper AI tools therefore more e-commerce tools targeting SMBs will find their way into the market. Nigerians love trading, and there’s always room for more solutions—whether full suites or simple WhatsApp/Instagram/Facebook bots.
6. Resurrection of Old Ideas
YC’s latest batch had startups eerily similar to some defunct Nigerian companies. Don’t be surprised if one of these old IPs gets a global reboot, fuelled by fresh market validation.
7. Local Accelerators Pivot (Again)
It's always funny when local accelerators relaunch or release their investment theses - usually a full 180 from the previous one. Even funnier? They do it without ever acknowledging the failures of the previous approach. The current word on the street is “revenue and sustainability focus”. With the market easing up, and the global accelerators they love to copy and prime their companies for changing gears, I wonder how long we have left before shutdowns or another wave of revisions
8. The Commodification Of FX
FX provision is becoming the new airtime vending—a race to the bottom. Too many players for cross-border remittance, transfers, cards, and multi-currency accounts vying for the same 10% market slice, pulling supply and APIs from the same 2–3 institutions. The result? Cheaper FX for the consumer, no loyalty, and opportunities for some cheap acquisitions by SWIFT, Western Union, and the banks in the coming years.
9. Low Consumer Fraud Or A Cashless Economy - The CBN Has To Choose One
The CBN wants a cashless economy but keeps restricting cash supply, forcing Nigerians to rely on agents who never have enough. This cycle has created a new fraud vector: less cash, more fraud, rinse and repeat. Nigerians will keep paying premiums for their cash in 2025, agency banking will continue expanding its scope unregulated, leading to newer and more shocking types of fraud, and Regulatory response will lag market reality.
Bonus
Stripe IPO - Finally: The thesis here is simple - New US President, excess liquidity in the global market, PayPal in retreat and Adyen on the rise. Global fintech needs another major win, and Stripe at 100 Billion is the perfect candidate.
Two banks cease to exist
Cardoso gets probed/suspended
The crypto guardrails get lifted, leading to a church/politician launching a token
The Nigerian courts will finally secure a conviction against fraudulent/negligent leadership of a financial services company.
The best thing about predictions is that they’re more likely to be wrong than right—and that’s why I enjoy making them. They help me balance personal convictions against professional ones. So, if you see me publicly taking a position against what’s written here, mind your business.
Have a great year everyone.
“You can just build things.”