Moniepoint wins SME Microfinance Bank of the Year for third straight year

Moniepoint Microfinance Bank has won the SME Microfinance Bank of the Year award for the third consecutive year at the BusinessDay Banks and Other Financial Institutions (BAFI) Awards. The bank received the honour at the 14th edition of the ceremony, where Tosin Eniolorunda, co-founder and Group Chief Executive Officer of Moniepoint Inc., was named SME Finance Transformation Leader of the Year.

The awards came after a year in which the bank reported higher lending and payment activity across its small business network. According to Moniepoint’s 2025 Year in Review, the microfinance bank disbursed more than ₦1 trillion in credit to thousands of small businesses.

Loan activity and data-led lending

Moniepoint said businesses that accessed the loans recorded average transaction value growth of more than 36 per cent after receiving financing. The reported increase reflects transaction activity among those borrowers, although the figures do not establish how much of that growth resulted directly from the loans.

The bank assesses borrowers using alternative data, including transaction histories, business patterns and payment behaviour. It said the approach allows it to evaluate creditworthiness through information generated by businesses’ everyday operations. For small enterprises, the offering combines access to financing with payment services and other tools used to manage business activity.

Scale of payments

Moniepoint said its microfinance bank serves more than six million active businesses and processes eight out of every 10 in-person payments in Nigeria. It also reported processing over 14 billion transactions worth ₦412 trillion in 2025, describing itself as the country’s largest merchant acquirer.

Ezekiel Sanni, Senior Vice President, Distribution Network Sales at Moniepoint, represented Eniolorunda at the ceremony. He said the award would strengthen the bank’s focus on providing financial services to small businesses.

"Small businesses are the backbone of the Nigerian economy, and this award strengthens our commitment to give them the credit, payments and tools they need to scale," Sanni said.

He added that Moniepoint would continue expanding access to credit and investing in its distribution network to support more businesses across the country. Sanni said Eniolorunda’s individual award reflected his focus on making financial services accessible to small businesses. He described the company’s ambition as building a financial system in which businesses across Nigeria can access the services needed to grow.

Other recognition and the broader market

The latest awards add to other recognitions received by Moniepoint, including Best Financial Institution in Women Empowerment from the Association of Professional Women Bankers. The bank also received Marketing Campaign of the Year (Brand) at the Creative Impact Institute Awards and recognition for Innovative Digital Financial Solutions for Women at the PreCEFI She’s Included Conference.

Organised by BusinessDay, the BAFI Awards recognise performance, innovation and leadership in Nigeria’s financial sector. The 2026 edition presented 67 awards across payments, lending, investment management, capital markets, insurance, pensions and trusteeship.

Separately, the Bank of Industry (BOI) has launched a digital platform called MyBOI, which allows Nigerian businesses to apply for financing, complete onboarding, and monitor their loan applications from start to finish without visiting a branch. The bank described the portal as a central part of its Credit Process Re-engineering and Automation Initiative, built to tackle longstanding problems in its financing process, including manual paperwork, multiple customer touchpoints and slow turnaround times that left applicants with little visibility into where their applications stood.

For Nigerian businesses, the Moniepoint figures show the scale of digital payment and credit channels passing through one provider, while the awards highlight the market’s focus on small business finance and transaction data.