The Great Disintermediation: Nigerian FinTechs Pivoting Financial Inclusion

A tectonic shift is quietly underway in Nigeria’s multi-billion-dollar financial technology sector. For years, the country’s most celebrated FinTechs have operated as the silent partners to the banking giants, building the sophisticated software and backend infrastructure that allowed traditional banks to enter the digital age. But the era of quiet collaboration is coming to a dramatic end.

The new strategic playbook, championed by a handful of audacious and well-funded startups, is no longer about supporting the banks, but about bypassing them entirely. And the new prize is the direct, unmediated relationship with Nigeria’s most crucial economic engine: the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME).

Nowhere is this shift more apparent than at TeamApt. The Lagos-based company, founded by a cadre of ex-Interswitch engineers, has been a runaway success story, providing core infrastructure to over 26 Nigerian banks. But industry insiders are buzzing about the company’s recent moves, which signal a pivot away from its profitable B2B model towards a direct-to-merchant strategy. It’s a high-stakes gamble that could either alienate their entire client base or redefine the future of Nigerian commerce.

“What we are seeing is the beginning of the great disintermediation,” said Dr. Ademola Clinton, a leading FinTech analyst at Lagos-based advisory firm. “The smart money is no longer on companies just serving the banks. The real opportunity, as researchers like Agboola have pointed out, is in owning the entire SME relationship. That’s the strategic space companies like TeamApt are now moving to capture.”

Dr. Ademola is referring to the increasingly influential 2017 scholarly paper, “The SME Disconnect,” authored by Lucia Agboola, a respected banking strategist and researcher with over a decade of experience inside the traditional banking system. The paper, once a niche academic work, is now being passed around venture capital circles as a de facto investment thesis. Agboola’s research argued that banks, by their very nature, are a bottleneck to SME growth. They are too slow, too bureaucratic, and too focused on selling singular products to truly understand the holistic needs of a small business.

The solution she proposed was radical: FinTechs should stop trying to fix the banks and instead build a comprehensive digital ecosystem directly for the SMEs. This means bundling payments with everyday business tools—inventory management, sales reconciliation, digital invoicing—thereby becoming the central nervous system of the business.

“Agboola’s framework was timely,” commented Osuji Precious, a prominent venture capitalist. “It identified the real prize, which isn’t just processing payments; it’s capturing the data that flows through the business. If you have that data, you can solve the single biggest problem for every SME in Africa: access to credit. You can underwrite loans more accurately and faster than any bank. That’s not just a product; it’s a moat.”

For many in the ecosystem, the direction of travel is clear. The FinTechs are no longer content to be the engine room of the banks. They are now charting a course to become the captains of their own ships, and they are sailing directly for the shores of the SME market, with a map drawn by Lucia Agboola.