When Moniepoint launched in September 2019, OPay had just raised $170 million and was sending terminal-carrying sales teams across Nigeria. Moniepoint had about 1,000 agents and no money for hardware. "We were taking terminals from banks and manually sending them to agents, individually, in other parts of the country," its head of growth, Tolu Adetuyi, told TechCabal in 2021.
By 2025 the company said "8 out of 10 in-person payments in Nigeria are made with Moniepoint," and it processed ₦412 trillion across more than 14 billion transactions, according to TechCabal.
Move 1: Pay agents when they need the money
Most agents are small traders who need each day's earnings to restock and run their homes. Moniepoint settled commissions daily while rivals paid monthly. "I started using Moniepoint because of their daily commission settlement while others were paying monthly," a Lagos agent told TechCabal. The company also gave agents live dashboards of their performance and earnings, so they could trust what they were paid.
Move 2: Turn top agents into managers
Moniepoint ran its network through WhatsApp groups for each local government area, led by cluster managers who were themselves agents. Strong agents could rise to cluster, state and regional manager, earning more at each step, TechCabal reports. The network recruited and trained itself.
Move 3: Reward active terminals, not just new ones
For every batch of terminals, a set number had to hit a minimum transaction value, depending on the area. "We don't really want merchants who use our terminals only when they need to make quick money. We want active agents who use them daily," said Solomon Amadi, then a vice president at the company.
Move 4: Fix the pain banks ignore
When a card withdrawal failed but the customer was still debited, getting the money back from a bank could take about eight days and a branch visit. Moniepoint offered a 24-hour resolution service, TechCabal reports. Trust built at the terminal became the base for its later move into business banking and credit.
