Sunday Ehigiator
Nombank has revealed that it is ramping up efforts to expand lending to Nigeria’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) after transaction volumes on its parent platform, Nomba, surged to about N250 billion daily, providing the fintech-backed microfinance bank with deeper insights into merchants’ financial behaviour and credit needs.
Speaking with THISDAY, the Chief Executive Officer of Nombank, Seun Osunkeye, said the bank is leveraging transaction data generated by businesses on the Nomba platform to build faster and more accessible credit products for SMEs that are traditionally underserved by the formal banking system.
According to him, the platform’s daily transaction volume has grown significantly from about N7 billion in May 2025 to roughly N250 billion in May 2026, reflecting increased merchant adoption and confidence in the ecosystem. He said the scale of transactions enables the bank to better assess business performance and extend credit based on real-time commercial activity rather than conventional lending requirements.
“Our advantage is data. Nomba processes roughly N250 billion in daily transaction volume across a large network of Nigerian businesses. That volume gives us a granular view into how those businesses actually operate: liquidity patterns, seasonal swings, operational trajectories that are invisible to conventional banks and credit bureaus,” Osunkeye said.
He explained that Nombank was established after Nomba acquired a microfinance banking licence, enabling it to operate as a regulated institution capable of mobilising deposits and extending credit directly to merchants using its platform. While initially conceived as the banking infrastructure supporting Nomba’s payment ecosystem, he said the institution has evolved into a standalone financial services provider targeting businesses underserved by traditional lenders.
Osunkeye noted that unlike many legacy microfinance banks, Nombank relies on transaction data instead of extensive paperwork or physical collateral to evaluate borrowers.
“Because we already have the transaction data, we can skip most of that documentation burden and assess credit in near real time. That lets us build facilities that mirror a business’s actual working capital cycle, rather than the abstract models that traditional banking theory tends to produce.”
Beyond direct lending, he disclosed that the bank is increasingly partnering with businesses across sectors to embed banking services into their platforms, enabling them to offer products such as collections, savings and credit to their own customers.
“The future of banking isn’t a super-app that does everything for everyone. It’s banking that disappears into the products people already use. Commerce and banking are converging, and businesses that understand their customers best increasingly want to offer financial services as a natural extension of what they already do. Nombank is powering that,” he said.
Speaking on the growing number of Nigerian fintech companies obtaining microfinance banking licences, Osunkeye said the trend reflects the need for firms to move beyond payments into deposit-taking and lending. However, he maintained that Nombank enjoys a competitive advantage because it built its customer base before launching its banking operations.
“Nombank isn’t a reaction to what anyone else is doing. We’ve been operating as the banking infrastructure behind Nomba for three to four years. While others are now acquiring licences and figuring out what to build, we’ve already been building quietly, with a live customer base stress-testing the product the whole time.”
Despite the rapid evolution of Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem, Osunkeye argued that the country’s biggest opportunity remains expanding access to credit for SMEs.
“The SME credit gap is where the real challenge remains. A lot of microfinance institutions, including the fintech-led ones, still operate mainly as deposit-mobilisation vehicles. The harder, more important work is building credit instruments that actually perform at scale for underserved businesses,” he added.
