Onafriq Shuts Down Baxi Agent Banking in Nigeria After Five Years
Pan-African fintech Onafriq has closed its Baxi agent banking business in Nigeria, ending a five-year operation. The exit is being read as a signal of margin compression and competitive pressure making the agent banking model economically unviable for mid-tier players in Nigeria's evolving payments market.
Baxi: instant transfers killed the POS agent, not Onafriq
The naira depreciation and rising costs are real. But the mechanism that actually broke Baxi's economics is simpler: Nigerians stopped needing to queue at a POS terminal.
Instant account-to-account transfers — the kind you do from your phone in seconds — ate the transaction mix that agent banking depended on. Cash withdrawals and bill payments couldn't sustain a nationwide agent network on their own.
That's the harder truth for anyone still building in the offline financial access space. The infrastructure gap is closing, but it's closing in a way that removes the middle layer, not just the friction.
4 sources
- Onafriq shuts down its Nigerian agent banking business after five years · techcabal.com · T1
- Onafriq shuts down Baxi agent banking business in Nigeria after 5 years · technext24.com · T2
- Onafriq winds down Baxi agent banking business in Nigeria · nairametrics.com · T2
- Onafriq shuts down Baxi agent banking in Nigeria · thecondia.com · T2