USSD and Nigeria's financial inclusion drive

Between 2010 and 2015, investors and entrepreneurs alike flocked to Nigeria. The economy was growing fast. The population and hence, the prospective market size was large and young. 

“We have a potential market size of over 180 million people,” many tech entrepreneurs were telling latent investors.

Today, it has become evident that Nigeria is struggling to reach that potential. For example, Amazon has over 112 million users in the United States (representing 34% of the population). 

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s biggest e-commerce company, Jumia, has 6.8 million users. The actual number of Nigerian users is even less, as the figure reported by Jumia includes customers in all the 14 geographical regions Jumia operated in last year. 

The reality is that for businesses to take advantage of Nigeria’s population; more Nigerians need to be participating in the digital space. 

For the many Nigerian businesses that rely on online payments, the pool of customers