@secondarycity.tech: Olu Akanmu is the former President & Co-CEO, OPay Nigeria and Academic Director, Lagos Business School and the fintech veteran who has watched Nigeria’s financial inclusion story be told through the payment numbers while the credit numbers sit quietly in the data telling a completely different story. In this clip, he names the most under-discussed problem in African fintech. The payment infrastructure is working. The payment numbers are impressive. But payment without credit is a highway without vehicles the infrastructure is there, but the economic mobility it is supposed to enable is not following. The next decade of African fintech is not about payment. It is about credit. This insight comes from experience. Olu watched OPay build the payment rails and understood from his banking background that the real economic impact the MSME growth, the wealth creation, the poverty reduction would only come when credit followed the payment infrastructure into the same underserved markets. For founders, especially in secondary cities: Stop building more payment products for markets that already have payment access. The 94% of Nigerians who still lack credit access are the next market and the one that will produce the next generation of meaningful African fintech companies. Payment was the foundation. Credit is the building.

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Wednesday 11 November 2026 08:00:00 GMT