This startup is betting on tap-to-pay in a transfer-dominated market

For many Nigerians, the question “Cash or transfer?” has become a default part of paying for goods and services, reflecting how deeply embedded cash and bank transfers are in the country’s payment culture. Although digital payments have grown rapidly over the last decade, most transactions in Nigeria are still cash-based, while cards, bank transfers, and USSD remain widely used alternatives.

But Malik Asamu and Bello Opeyemi, co-founders of two-year-old CashAfrica, think there’s room for contactless payments to break into the mainstream. Their bet is that tapping a phone or card to pay could eventually become as familiar to Nigerians as making a bank transfer.

As CashAfrica aims to operate as an infrastructure layer for payment service providers, partnerships are a crucial part of its growth strategy. Two partnerships have been particularly important for the startup since it launched.

The first, with PalmPay, saw CashAfrica roll out tap-to-pay functionalities on 1,000 PalmPay POS terminals in a pilot in 2025.

Another partnership, this time with ChamsSwitch, is designed to handle switching and settlement for payments initiated using CashAfrica infrastructure. Beyond solving an infrastructure problem, the partnership was designed to strengthen its compliance credentials and give financial institutions greater confidence, especially commercial banks that may hesitate to partner without adequate regulatory cover.

The startup also believes the regulatory backing the partnership offers could help ease fundraising conversations while paving the way for building a local alternative to Google Pay and Apple Pay.

“A lot of the banks and institutions we’re partnering or looking to partner with, like PalmPay, Kuda, Zenith, and UBA, are institutions managing 15 to 30 million users,” Asamu shares. “When banks of that scale consider deploying a new and innovative infrastructure, compliance is non-negotiable. They need to be certain that whatever they are putting in front of their customers meets the highest regulatory standards.”

The startup has secured undisclosed investments from Timothy Draper and other investors through the Draper University Founder Residency Programme in 2025. It also announced funding from the Afropreneur Angel Group earlier this year.

The appeal of card payments and bank transfers has always been speed and convenience. But even those options are slower than contactless payments, which can often be completed in just a second or two — roughly the time it takes to tap a card or smartphone against a payment terminal. Despite that advantage, contactless payments have been slow to gain traction in Nigeria.

Although banks issue contactless cards and NFC-enabled smartphones have become more common, acceptance remains a major challenge as there are still relatively few places where consumers can reliably use tap-to-pay options.

CashAfrica believes solving that infrastructure gap could unlock broader adoption. The startup says surveys conducted among users showed many Nigerians are willing to use contactless payments instead of transfers when the option is available.

Part of its strategy involves partnering with financial institutions, including PalmPay, UBA, and Sterling Bank, to expand access through existing banking and payment networks. In addition to providing APIs to financial institutions, the company also operates a consumer-facing mobile app.

“The consumer app exists primarily as an adoption and onboarding layer. It allows users to easily experience tap-to-pay by linking cards or funding wallets, while also helping drive awareness around contactless payments generally,” Asamu notes.

While limited access to NFC-enabled smartphones is often cited as a major barrier to adoption, Asamu argues the bigger issue is awareness and user behaviour.

“From our experience, device availability is becoming less of a barrier than many people assume,” he says. “The bigger challenge is user behaviour and awareness. Once users experience the speed and convenience of tap-to-pay, adoption tends to become much easier.”

Since launch, the startup says more than ₦2 billion has been processed using its infrastructure.

CashAfrica is entering a payments ecosystem that is already intensely competitive. Nigerian consumers have grown comfortable with instant bank transfers, while fintechs, including OPay, PalmPay, Moniepoint, and Kuda, have spent years building consumer trust and merchant distribution networks.

The company is also competing, at least indirectly, with established payment infrastructure providers such as Interswitch and Flutterwave, both of which already support card payments and merchant acquiring services at scale.

Rather than compete directly with those companies, CashAfrica is betting there is room to become a specialised infrastructure provider focused specifically on contactless payments. Its business model reflects that positioning. The startup charges financial institutions and partners usage-based fees for API calls made through its infrastructure, effectively positioning itself as a backend layer that banks and fintechs can plug into rather than build their own tap-to-pay systems from scratch.

That model could work in its favour if contactless payments become more widely adopted, especially because it allows the company to scale alongside larger financial institutions without needing to aggressively acquire customers itself.

Still, the path to mainstream adoption remains uncertain. Although the Central Bank of Nigeria released formal guidelines for contactless payments in 2023, consumer behaviour may prove harder to change than regulation. Transfers have become deeply embedded in everyday commerce, partly because they require little additional infrastructure from merchants beyond a bank account and a smartphone.

Contactless payments, on the other hand, still depend on NFC-enabled devices, compatible terminals, and merchant education. In a market where many businesses are already comfortable accepting transfers, convincing merchants to adopt another payment method could take time.

For CashAfrica, survival may depend less on whether Nigerians eventually adopt tap-to-pay and more on whether it can position itself early enough as the infrastructure powering that shift if it happens.

For now, the startup appears focused on quietly building partnerships and distribution while betting that convenience and speed will eventually push contactless payments into the mainstream.