For decades, the narrative of African growth has been trapped in the “Official GDP” cage – a metric built to measure annual value added, yet often blind to the high-velocity, cash-dominant trade humming through our secondary cities.
From the manufacturing clusters of Aba to the logistics hubs of Onitsha and the oil-servicing ecosystems of Port Harcourt, a massive layer of economic activity has operated with limited statistical visibility.
In 2025, Nigeria’s electronic transaction value, tracked by NIBSS, surged toward an estimated N1.2 quadrillion – roughly ten times the nation’s nominal GDP.
To be clear, transaction value is not GDP. Payments measure gross financial flows, while GDP measures value added. A naira can move multiple times across a value chain before contributing once to output statistics.
But that distinction does not weaken the moment. It sharpens it.
What this surge represents is not a rewriting of GDP arithmetic. It is the emergence of a real-time economic seismograph – a high-frequency signal of liquidity, density, and trade velocity in places national accounts struggle to capture with precision.
This isn’t just a fintech boom. It is the first scalable, digital mapping of Africa’s trade arteries.
The Moniepoint Signal: A New Economic Infrastructure Layer
At the heart of this fintech-fication is Moniepoint, which reported processing N412 trillion in 2025 transactions.
While the Lagos-centric narrative often focuses on consumer apps like OPay and PalmPay, the deeper story is unfolding at the merchant layer. OPay may lead in consumer transaction volume, but Moniepoint’s N412 trillion in value signals dominance where productive commerce actually happens – the point of sale.
By capturing an estimated 80% of in-person POS payments, Moniepoint has effectively embedded itself into the operating system of Nigerian SMEs. This is not merely scale; it is infrastructural positioning.
Consumer wallets capture spending. Merchant rails capture trade. And trade – not transfers – is what builds economies.
The Velocity Trap: Transactional inclusion vs. capital formation
From the vantage point of secondary city ecosystems, this data is both a triumph and a warning.
We have achieved transactional inclusion. Liquidity moves faster and more visibly than at any time in our history.
But liquidity movement is not the same as capital formation.
In 2025, Moniepoint processed N412 trillion in transactions and disbursed N1 trillion in credit. That represents roughly 0.24% of transaction flow, translating into structured lending.
Now, transaction value is a flow metri,c while loan books can reflect both flow and outstanding stock. The comparison is not meant to imply that every naira processed should convert into credit. Rather, it reveals a structural asymmetry: digital rails have scaled liquidity far faster than institutions have scaled productive capital deployment.
Even modest improvements in credit conversion – say 2% of transaction flow – would imply multi-trillion-naira working capital expansion for SMEs.
For trade corridors in the South-East and South-South, the goal is not simply faster payments. It is the transformation of transaction history into bankable credibility – so that high-velocity trade can be collateralized into factories, inventory financing, logistics infrastructure, and export readiness under AfCFTA.
Velocity without investment compounds circulation. Velocity with capital formation compounds productivity.
The Pan-African Implications
This is not a Nigerian anomaly. It is a continental signal.
Digitization is documenting informal trade at scale before it is fully formalized.
The term “informal” does not disappear overnight – but it is being progressively recorded, timestamped, and risk-profiled.
Secondary cities are no longer peripheral. Payment rail data suggests that trade density outside primary capitals is deeper and more resilient than official narratives suggest.
The liquidity engines of emerging trade triangles are becoming statistically visible.
The next frontier is clear: data as collateral.
If N1.2 quadrillion in digital payment footprints reflects the velocity of African commerce, then the institutional challenge is converting that data exhaust into affordable credit, insurance products, supply chain financing, and export guarantees.
Whoever builds that bridge defines the next phase of African economic architecture.
Conclusion: From payments to power
The evolution from N1.07 quadrillion (in 2024) to today’s heights signals more than digital adoption. It signals that Africa’s economic pulse is stronger – and more measurable – than conventional frameworks often assume.
Payments are not GDP. But they are becoming a high-resolution proxy for economic vitality – particularly in regions where survey-based national accounting lags commercial reality.
Fintech is no longer just a payment utility. It is an emerging economic infrastructure.
The ledger is no longer invisible.
The question now is whether Africa will convert its digitized liquidity into industrial capital – or remain a high-velocity marketplace without structural transformation.
Uche Aniche is the Convener, #StartupSouth & ASVLP
