How Tosin Eniolorunda Took Moniepoint to $297 Billion in Processed Payments in 2025

Tosin Eniolorunda, founder and CEO of Moniepoint, built the company differently and quietly, before pushing it to the front line of everyday trade. In 2025, the company says it processed ₦412 trillion (about $297 billion) in transaction value across more than 14 billion transactions, a scale that places the business among the most important private payment rails in the country.

What makes Moniepoint’s rise even more striking is the market it serves. Nigeria’s workforce is overwhelmingly informal, and most businesses still run on thin margins and fast cash cycles. He t from selling infrastructure to banks to serving the millions of small businesses that keep Nigeria’s economy running, often without paperwork, collateral, or patience for downtime.

The Back-End Years

Eniolorunda did not begin by chasing consumer buzz. When he left Interswitch in 2015 to start TeamApt with co-founders, including Felix Ike, the early work focused on bank brands, building payment and reconciliation infrastructure that banks needed but rarely discussed. 

Back-end infrastructure requires discipline in uptime, settlement accuracy, dispute handling, and the small operational details that determine whether funds move as promised. It also offers a rare education in where Nigerian banking systems break under pressure, knowledge that becomes valuable later when you are building products for merchants who cannot afford “network issues” during rush hour.

Even in those early days, Eniolorunda’s mindset leaned toward proving the work before demanding a premium for it. “Since people will jump on you when you have value, it’s better to prove that you have value first,” he said in a 2018 interview about the company’s bootstrapped approach.

Building Mass Market Trust

The National Bureau of Statistics’ latest official labour data shows informal employment at 92.7% in Q1 2024. Yet, Nigeria’s payment flows are exploding – NIBSS says electronic payment transactions surged to N284.99 trillion in Q1 2025, a 17.7% increase year-on-year compared to Q1 2024. Point-of-Sale (PoS) transactions reached N10.45 trillion in the same period, marking a 209% rise. 

Moniepoint’s story is about capturing that shift early, designing for the people whose livelihoods depend on their daily transactions, and meeting them where they are to present solutions that make their lives even easier. 

Eniolorunda has been unusually direct about that constraint. “Most African markets are low-trust and typically require a human interface before adopting digital solutions,” he told Rest of World in 2023.

That one line explains much of Moniepoint’s distribution logic. In 2019, Moniepoint shifted from bank infrastructure to direct merchant service. TechCabal reports that the platform recorded more than 100,000 daily transactions that year.

The pivot was built on three decisions:

• Win trust with faster, clearer settlements.

In agency banking and PoS, people stay where they get paid reliably. TechCabal’s 2021 deep dive on TeamApt described how Moniepoint’s daily commission settlement became a breakthrough feature for agents, many of whom needed money daily to restock and keep their households running.

• Build Local Feedback Loops

Moniepoint created an agent support structure, including WhatsApp groups organised by local government area, used to capture “street-level” intelligence and quickly resolve issues. In practical terms, it meant merchants were not abandoned to call centres when settlements failed or terminals froze. The human layer became a competitive moat.

• Treat Hardware as Distribution, Not Cost.

After TeamApt’s $5.5 million Series A in 2019, the company could place terminal orders and scale its rollout more aggressively. 

The timing also helped. As digital payments expanded and cash cycles became more volatile, especially during Nigeria’s recent cash crunch, Moniepoint’s combination of bank-grade rails and “nearby” support made it sticky for businesses that simply needed to keep selling.

From TeamApt to Moniepoint

In January 2023, Eniolorunda officially announced the rebranding of TeamApt to Moniepoint, its flagship product that many were already familiar with. 

“I’m proud to announce that today, TeamApt Inc. takes on the name of our flagship product to become known as Moniepoint Inc.” he wrote at the time.

The rebrand had to correlate with the company’s shift – from selling to banks to owning the relationship with the shop owner, the fuel station operator, the pharmacy, the supermarket cashier, and the informal trader who measures success by whether the terminal works and the money lands.

The Credit Layer

Payments made Moniepoint visible. Credit made it indispensable.

In its 2025 Year in Review, the company reported that its microfinance bank disbursed over ₦1 trillion in credit to small businesses. The consumer lending part is somewhat like working capital: short-cycle financing for inventory, payroll, restocking, and daily operating needs.

The underwriting argument is that when you see a merchant’s real transaction patterns, you can estimate capacity better than a static credit score ever will. The approach fits the structure of African work. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has noted that informal employment dominates across the continent, hovering around the low-to-mid 80% range depending on definitions and geography, meaning millions of enterprises live outside classic credit files.

Moniepoint’s own framing ties the mission to that economic structure. In its 2025 review statement, Eniolorunda said, “Our journey has been one of intentional evolution.”

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What Moniepoint Has Raised Since Inception

Moniepoint’s capital raise mirrors its business story – start carefully, prove the model, then raise big when the rails are already carrying weight.

2019 — Series A: $5.5 million

TeamApt closed a $5.5 million Series A led by Quantum Capital Partners in 2019. Around that period, Eniolorunda warned against premature fundraising pressure, saying, “Raising funds too early… traps them in a cycle of fear and inability” to take risks or innovate.

2022 — Pre-Series C: More than $50 million

 In 2022, TeamApt raised more than $50 million in a round co-led by QED Investors and Novastar Ventures, with participation from Lightrock and BII, according to Techpoint Africa.

2024 — Series C First Close: $110 million (unicorn milestone)

In October 2024, Moniepoint announced $110 million in new funding, with Google’s Africa Investment Fund joining and DPI, Lightrock, and Verod also involved, according to Reuters. The raise pushed the company to “unicorn” status, and Eniolorunda captured the mood in a simple line: “this still feels like Day One.”

2025 — Series C completion: Over $200 Million

By October 2025, Moniepoint said it had completed a Series C of over $200 million, led by DPI with LeapFrog Investments also participating. Eniolorunda called it “a proud day” and said, “We founded the Company out of a genuine passion to widen financial inclusion for African businesses.”

Cross-border Footprint

Moniepoint’s expansion story is now moving outward. Reuters noted product launches, including MonieWorld, aimed at diaspora remittances from the UK. The company also cites global partnerships as part of its ambitions. When Visa invested, Eniolorunda wrote, “Currently, we process over 1 billion transactions monthly,” tying scale to the case for deeper payment infrastructure across Africa.

If the first decade was about proving Moniepoint could run reliably at Nigeria-scale, the next phase is about whether that operating model, hybrid distribution, infrastructure depth, and cash-flow-based credit, travels well across borders without losing discipline.