Allawee wants to restore fintechs’ confidence in cards

Nigerian fintechs person had a mixed narration with cards. In the past, immoderate offered foreign-issued cards similar Visa and Mastercard to get customers and promote online spending. However, arsenic Nigeria’s system worsened and bank transfers grew, fintechs began ditching overseas paper schemes successful favour of section alternatives oregon stopped offering cards altogether to chopped costs and accommodate to shifting idiosyncratic behaviour.

Now, Nigerian fintech, Allawee, is gathering infrastructure to assistance fintechs connection cards to their customers. Allawee is aiding different fintechs similar Piggyvest, Nomba, and Carbon to contented cards done its end-to-end card-issuing infrastructure, which includes halfway banking, paper authorisation services, and nonstop integration with switches and paper schemes similar Mastercard and Verve. 

“We’ve wrapped each of that into a elemental instrumentality that tin beryllium accessed done a no-code dashboard oregon via an API,” Ikenna Enenwali, Allawee’s CEO, told TechCabal. 

Fintechs marque wealth from paper transactions done a interest known arsenic interchange, a tiny percent charged each clip their customers wage with their cards. If cards are dormant, they proceed to incur card-related costs, specified arsenic attraction and compliance, without earning interchange revenue.

Allawee’s gross exemplary is three-pronged: a monthly interest connected each progressive card, a 0.5% interchange fee, and a higher interest for processing overseas transactions. 

Customers indispensable usage their cards often for a fintech to interruption adjacent oregon crook a nett with cards. However, arsenic bank transfers grew to relationship for implicit 51% of online outgo transactions, customers transacted little with cards, making them a outgo centre for fintechs. The higher margins with slope transfers besides made fintechs deprioritise cards. 

Despite these issues, cards stay 1 of the astir effectual channels for customers to entree their funds. For many, cards connection an casual and accelerated enactment to entree cash. If Allawee tin consistently guarantee that cards issued done its level implicit transactions reliably and marque wealth for the fintechs, it could reverse their deprioritisation of cards. 

How Allawee helped Carbon bring cards back 

Carbon, a 13-year-old fintech known for its loan-led approach, stopped offering cards in 2024 due to the fact that of the precocious costs tied to overseas cards.  The institution brought them back successful February 2025 aft rising request from customers. This comeback was made imaginable done a concern with Allawee, which helped Carbon lick its 2 biggest problems with offering cards: persistent failed transactions and the precocious transaction cost. 

Allawee’s solution allowed Carbon to coordinate with respective outgo switches, paper processors, banks, paper personalisers, and manufacturers successful its dashboard, which chopped the clip it takes to contented cards from months to weeks.

“With conscionable 3 clicks, a fintech tin configure, issue, and negociate cards, “Enenwali said. “Launching a paper programme traditionally takes astir 1 to 2 years, whether successful Nigeria oregon elsewhere. We’ve chopped that timeline down to conscionable a fewer weeks. That velocity has been a game-changer.” 

The startup is besides allowing its customers to bypass dollar-denominated fees that devour into margins connected paper transactions done an integration with Verve, Interswitch’s paper service, which charges successful naira.  

“We rebuilt the commercialized logic. Even erstwhile a lawsuit makes a tiny ₦10,000 outgo oregon withdraws ₦5,000 from an ATM, the fintech should not suffer wealth connected that transaction. With our infrastructure, they don’t,” Enenwali said. 

Allawee’s customers tin besides contented Nigerian customers who marque overseas transactions with Mastercard. In 2024, the planetary paper issuer launched Naijacard, a Nigeria-focused paper that charges successful naira erstwhile making overseas transactions. Verve charges a level complaint little than ₦10 per transaction, Enenwali said, compared to planetary paper schemes that complaint successful dollars and are based connected transaction amount. 

“For planetary paper acceptance, we worked straight with Mastercard for 2 years to negociate a caller pricing model. This exemplary has made Mastercard issuance commercially viable for section fintechs again,” Enenwali said. 

The startup claims its APIs person allowed its customers to successfully execute paper transactions, starring to a 60% monthly maturation complaint connected its level implicit the past 4 months. “We’re trying to reconstruct assurance successful cards. We judge that if you springiness radical a reliable paper experience, they’ll similar it,” Enenwali said. 

The startup besides has plans to grow to Francophone West Africa earlier the extremity of the year, acknowledgment to a concern with Mastercard. 

“The Carbon lawsuit besides validated thing we person believed each along: astir infrastructure problems are not astir innovation; they are astir execution,” Enenwali said. “The exertion exists, but it’s often poorly integrated, poorly localised, and hard to access. We made it simple. API-first, developer-friendly, and modular. That’s our edge.”

Enenwali believes that if his institution tin little costs and marque cards reliable, cards tin turn to go a captious portion of Nigeria’s integer payments market. If Allawee tin win connected that front, it could alteration however cards are viewed successful Nigeria’s fintech industry. 

Editor’s Note: This nonfiction has been edited to region a punctuation erroneously attributed to Carbon CEO, Chijioke Dozie.