On 31 December 2015, Joshua Chibueze saw a viral post of a woman breaking her kolo, a wooden savings box, to show a year of savings. Within days, his friends Somto Ifezue and Odun Eweniyi had built the first version of a digital kolo, TechCabal reports. PiggyVest now says it has about 6.7 million users and has paid more than ₦3 trillion back to savers since 2016.
Move 1: Copy a habit people already trust
The kolo already worked because you had to break it to get your money. PiggyVest's first product copied that: link a card, pick an amount and schedule, and the app debits you automatically. Savings stayed locked until the end of each quarter, when you could withdraw free. Breaking early cost 5%. "People who had never managed to leave money in a bank account left it for three months to avoid paying it," TechCabal reports.
Move 2: Stop when trust is at risk
Within three months the team found security holes: some users had linked other people's cards. In March 2016 they shut sign-ups and took the app offline to rebuild, relaunching in April. "We had all this hype, but we had to interrupt everything," Eweniyi said in the company's documentary, according to TechCabal. In a year when a Ponzi scheme cost Nigerians billions, pausing was the trust-building move.
Move 3: Turn compliance into a better brand
Regulators ordered the company to stop using the name PiggyBank because it did not hold a banking licence. The founders switched to PiggyVest, a name they already owned and one that fitted the investment products they planned next.
Move 4: Make discipline social
In 2021 PiggyVest introduced its annual Wealth Accrued report, grading users' saving like secondary school results, from A1 to C5. Users began posting their grades at the end of each year, turning private discipline into public bragging and free marketing.
