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

CashAfrica is betting on contactless payments as Nigeria’s next major shift, building infrastructure and partnerships to power tap-to-pay adoption.

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...