Nigerians Love Transfers. So Why Won't They Tap to Pay?

Nigerians are not shy about digital money.  

In 2024, instant payments on the national transfer system passed ₦1 quadrillion for the first time. Send money, receive money, pay your friend back in seconds: we do it all day. So, you would expect tapping a phone at the counter to be a small step. It is not. CashAfrica CEO Malik Asamu puts contactless payments at about 0.1% of payments in Nigeria. 

That gap is odd, and it is the reason CashAfrica's new deal with Chicken Republic is worth a closer look. Asamu wants to lift that 0.1% to 5% in 18 months, and he is starting at the one place almost everyone visits: the food counter. 

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Contactless Cards Are Common, but Shops Can't Accept Them 

Banks have issued contactless cards for years. The trouble is that shops could not read them. Lendsqr CEO Adedeji Olowe once said cardholders carry their contactless cards as mere decorations because there are no places to tap and go. 

The machines are a big part of this. Many POS terminals in use today lack the hardware for contactless payments. Shop owners must upgrade them, and upgrades cost money. Nobody wants to buy a new machine if customers are not asking for it. 

This creates a classic chicken-and-egg trap. Customers will not tap if shops cannot accept it, and shops will not upgrade if customers do not tap. That is why a deal with a big chain matters. Chicken Republic has more than 350 outlets, so one agreement puts tap-to-pay in front of a lot of hungry people at once. 

Do Nigerians Have the NFC Phones for Tap-to-Pay? 

Next comes the phone. Tapping with a phone needs a chip called NFC, and not every phone has one. Low NFC penetration has been named as a major barrier, and one speaker at a 2024 contactless forum said most Nigerians do not own NFC phones because they are expensive. 

Asamu sees it differently. He says about half of Android phones in Nigeria already have NFC, and so do iPhones from the iPhone 6 onward. In his view, the bigger issue is an awareness gap. He believes that once people try tap-to-pay and feel the speed, adoption gets much easier. 

Both sides may be right. Phones may be more ready than people think, but a person who has never tapped will not go looking for the feature. PalmPay and Moniepoint each planned to roll out five million AfriGO cards, because many Nigerians still lack NFC phones, and a tappable card is an easier first step. 

Why Nigerians Prefer Bank Transfers Over Cards 

Even with perfect machines and phones, people have to want to switch, and Nigerians are very happy with transfers. About 48.5% of Nigerians prefer bank transfers, and transfers have beaten card payments since 2021. Paystack data shows the same pattern, with transfers making up 58% of its Nigerian transactions. 

Part of the reason is fear of fraud. Many people worry about sharing card details, so transfers feel safer. Cards are also not that common to begin with. Only 35.5% of Nigerians over 18 own a debit card, so a tap-to-pay card has a smaller crowd to start with. 

There is also a speed problem. A transfer needs an app, an account number, and a wait for the alert. Tap-to-pay should beat that, and Asamu's team says payments can finish in two to three seconds even on a 3G network.  

But beating something people already trust is hard. Asamu admits this himself, saying a new option must not cost more than what people already use, or no one will change. 

How Old Payment Habits and Past Failures Shape Trust 

Money habits run deep. Many Nigerians use cash for small daily spending, transfers for planned and bigger purchases, and cards as a backup. Older people also tend to stick to one method they believe in. Tap-to-pay does not yet have a clear place in that routine. 

Nigeria has seen this problem before. When Payattitude launched as an earlier contactless product, people's experience with other payment tools blocked them from taking in new information. Even when the new option was better, they stuck with their old bias. A bad run with cards and POS machines can make people doubt anything that looks similar. 

Asamu says earlier tries simply came too early, and that older systems needed customers to visit a bank first. His own product works through phone software, with no bank visit needed. 

That is a real difference, but he still has to win over people who have been burned before.