Nigerian fintech PalmPay will expand into South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, and Tanzania by the end of 2025, building on momentum from processing over 15 million daily transactions in its home market during the first quarter, Managing Director Chika Nwosu said at a press conference on Wednesday. He declined to disclose the value of the transactions.
The expansion will bring PalmPay’s footprint to six African countries, following earlier launches in Ghana and Kenya. If successful, the broader presence could scale the company’s growth and position it for a future public offering. In Tanzania, the company will offer business-to-business services, but did not specify its product offerings for other new markets.
PalmPay, which says it has more than 35 million users in Nigeria, will face stiff competition in its new markets. In South Africa, it will compete with MTN’s MoMo platform, which has 11 million registered users, and TymeBank, which has 9 million. In Côte d’Ivoire, fintech unicorn Wave dominates with over 20 million accounts and roughly 70% of the market. Uganda’s mobile money space is largely controlled by telecom heavyweights MTN and Airtel.
Nwosu also shared that customers now perform an average of 50 transactions—including bank transfers and airtime purchases—monthly with a 99.5% success rate.
“Mobile money wasn’t always perceived as viable, but we identified a core problem: system reliability, especially for simple things like free and seamless transfers,” he said. “So we invested in technology that’s efficient and reliable.”
PalmPay also paid out over ₦4 billion ($2.4 million) in 2024 to 9 million users with its wealth product, which allows users to earn daily interest fees. Given that PalmPay offers users up to 22% annual interest on deposits in its wealth product, a ₦4 billion interest payout in 2024 means the fintech held over ₦18 billion ($11 million) in customer deposits on its wealth wallet alone. Customers also hold deposits outside of the fintech’s wealth wallet.
Despite the limitations of its mobile money license, PalmPay users can earn interest and purchase treasury bills through its partnerships with insurance companies like Leadway Assurance and investment houses like ARM.
“We have effectively built a super app that integrates banking, investment, insurance, and payments,” Nwosu said. “Think of it like a one-stop financial marketplace that is fully compliant through layered partnerships.”
The fintech will also deepen its reach in Nigeria’s underserved regions despite being present in all of Nigeria’s 774 local governments and open an office in the six geopolitical zones, Nwosu said.
After launching its first debit card in partnership with Verve in March, Nwosu told reporters that the company is on course to distribute over 5 million cards before the end of 2025. Palmpay will distribute the cards through its network of over one million agents nationwide, who serve over 13 million customers monthly.
PalmPay will not rest on its Q1 numbers, as it is investing in technology, listening to customers, and continuously improving security, reliability, and product depth to attract more customers, Nwosu said.
According to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS), licensed mobile money operators like PalmPay and OPay processed ₦71.5 trillion in transactions in 2024, a 53.4% increase from 2023’s ₦46.6 trillion.
