CashAfrica has partnered with Chicken Republic to bring phone-based tap-to-pay to the restaurant chain, according to Techpoint Africa, in a bid to make contactless payments ordinary in Nigeria.
The rollout
The partnership was announced in Lagos on 13 October 2026. It starts at select outlets in Lagos and then expands to Abuja, Ibadan and Ogun State, Techpoint Africa reports. Chicken Republic has more than 350 outlets nationwide.
CEO Malik Asamu said a bank and a top fintech partnership will be announced before the end of the month, and talks with other quick-service restaurants and supermarkets are continuing. CashAfrica already works with Kuda, Nomba, OPay, PalmPay and Zenith Bank, according to Techpoint Africa.
How it works and what it costs
Tap-to-pay needs an NFC-enabled phone. Asamu told Techpoint Africa that most iPhones from the iPhone 6 and about half of Android devices in Nigeria support NFC. Chicken Republic's CTO, Bello Opeyemi, said payments can work on 3G in two to three seconds, and that the worst case for a debited-but-uncredited payment resolves in under six hours.
It is free for users. Merchants pay a fee of about 0.3% to 1.5% depending on the business model, according to Techpoint Africa.
The hard part is habit
Asamu estimates contactless is about 0.1% of Nigerian payments, a figure he supplied himself, and the CBN does not publish a contactless number. Central bank 2024 data cited by Techpoint Africa shows 51.91% of transactions through web or internet channels, 28.53% through PoS and 15.58% through mobile.
Earlier contactless efforts, including Paywithcapture and Access Bank's PayAttitude, did not take off. Asamu attributes that to arriving too early, according to Techpoint Africa. He also claims that 9 of 10 users who tried tap-to-pay would use it again.
