On Friday, October 24, 2025, CASA Microfinance Bank launched with the theme “The Evolution” at the Royal Box Event Centre. The event, which brought together industry veterans and innovators, positioned the new digital bank as a deliberately designed response to the sector’s current challenges, focusing heavily on technology, risk mitigation, and consumer convenience.
Dr. Jude Monye gave his keynote speech, titled “Evolution of banking – the power of digital transformation,” which addressed the historical journey and future landscape of Nigerian finance. Dr. Monye affirmed Nigeria’s standing as a powerhouse, noting that the nation “has emerged as an African leading FinTech investment hub. It has captured approximately 36% of all African FinTech funding between 2020 and the first half of 2024.”
However, Dr. Monye further noted that this progress is not without turbulence, as the industry “controls acute operational challenges.” He concluded that today’s digitisation is about using technology “to do business efficiently and effectively and to grow wealth.”
Dr. Monye’s address swiftly moved to the future, zeroing in on Artificial Intelligence, noting its duality. He observed that “AI promises revolutionary efficiencies across all the processes like credit, underwriting, fraud detection,” but cautioned that “its adoption introduces unprecedented governance, ethical practices as well as regulatory risk.” To manage this, he issued a direct mandate to financial institutions: “Since AI is an inequitable force, banks must prioritise risk-centric deployment, selecting initial use cases that offer high impact with lower risk.” He concluded by stating that “future industry leaders will be those institutions that successfully navigate the complex challenges of data governance, deliver frictionless security and strategically manage the systemic race inherent in autonomous and intercontinent, connected digital platforms.”
Transitioning from the macro perspective to CASA Bank app’s core offering, Co-founder Ogo Anerobi defined the institution’s identity through simplicity and emotion. The bank’s mission, according to Anerobi, summarised in one sentence, is “to make your life easier.” She emphasised that the bank is built for simplicity, asserting, “Casa stands out with its ease of use. We are building a world where payments are as easy as sending a tweet or making a post on social media, and so the ease of use is one of the things that makes us stand out.” She added that the choice of brand colour, blue, is strategic: “Blue is a color that is associated with rest, with a feeling of coolness, with a feeling of home.”
This focus on convenience is strongly paired with a commitment to security, as detailed by Managing Director Abisola Jinadu. Recognising industry-wide vulnerabilities, she explained CASA’s highly adaptive stance on fraud prevention. “I understand that fraud is a big issue,” she stated, “but for us, our compliance is very risk-based. We’re not going to stay static.” Furthermore, Jinadu assured that the bank’s onboarding standards would be dynamic: “We’re trying to make sure that all our KYCs are going to be situational.” She also stressed the continuous internal effort, adding, “We also make sure that our anti-money laundering (AML) is up to date, because it is very important for us. And we do our training very regularly. We also do training on cybersecurity.”
The product roadmap, explained by Head of Product Emmanuel Onwubiko, revealed features designed to measure user adoption. The initial launch focused on “interactive features” like the flagship “snap’n’pay”. Emmanuel detailed the product philosophy: “Snap’n’pay is supposed to measure how people interact with these services. We want to use it to kind of gauge the acceptance of people, and then from there, we start building up on it.” The goal is to move beyond the mundane: “We want to make it easy that when I want to make payment, all I just have to do is snap [the bank account] and I pay.”
Another key feature of the app is sending money to beneficiaries through a username, tagging them like you would on social media.
CASA bank’s app is available for download at Google Play Store and available for beta users on the Apple Store.
