Over 100,000 users. 50 countries. Zero transfer fees. The Lagos fintech has proven it can survive; now it wants to scale.
Most African fintech startups don’t make it to year three. The ones that do usually have something to say about it. Platnova, which turned three this month, has numbers.
Over 100,000 verified users; transactions in 15 currencies across more than 50 countries; a savings product – Vault – offering 15.5% ROI in four currencies simultaneously; a USD Account that lets African users hold and send dollars in real time; and, most recently, the elimination of all naira transfer fees permanently.
That last move is the one worth watching. In 2023, Nigerians processed over 1.7 billion transfers through the interbank settlement system. The fees attached to those transactions ran into the tens of billions of naira. Platnova is betting that zero fees is not a promotional strategy but a product moat. Whether that bet holds as the company scales is one of the more interesting questions in Nigerian fintech right now.
“You shouldn’t be taxed for moving your own money. Free transfers are not a promo for us, it’s a principle.”- Benjamin Oyemolan, CEO, Platnova.
The business play is the other thing to pay attention to. Platnova is moving deliberately into SME and merchant infrastructure – API tools, multi-currency payment rails, instant settlement. It’s a crowded space, but Platnova’s existing compliance architecture across five jurisdictions (Nigeria, UK, US, Canada, Rwanda) gives it a structural advantage that newer entrants will find expensive to replicate.
The company placed second runner-up at the Startup World Cup Grand Finale in San Francisco last 2 years – one of the few African fintechs to reach that stage. It has since opened a new Lagos headquarters and is signalling an expansion into new markets as year four begins.
Three years in, Platnova is no longer trying to convince anyone it belongs. The question now is how far it can go and how fast.
