Tech Expert Urges Fintechs to Build for Trust

By Ugo Aliogo

In Nigeria’s fast-evolving fintech space, building trust is no longer optional; it’s mission-critical. At the centre of this conversation is a seasoned Tech Expert and Senior Software Engineer at Cowrywise, Taslim Oseni. With years of experience building high-impact features for one of Nigeria’s leading fintech companies, he shares why trust must be engineered, not assumed, and how transparency starts deep in the codebase.

Could you walk us through why trust is such a major issue in Nigerian fintech today?

Look at it this way. In a country where failed banks and Ponzi schemes are part of our collective memory, it is expected that people would be very sceptical towards financial platforms. It is a rational fear. This puts a responsibility on fintech startups to earn and keep trust, not just through branding, but through the invisible layers of engineering.

What does building for trust look like at Cowrywise?
On the Cowrywise Android platform, I led the development of features like Money Duo, Circle, Bank Linking, and several Dollar-funded investment plans. These weren’t just ordinary product milestones; they were also technical commitments to transparency and reliability.

Building for trust sounds like a lot of extra work. Isn’t it expensive or slow for startups?

It can feel that way at first. But skipping these things early creates massive tech debt, and in fintech, tech debt is synonymous to trust debt. The cost of fixing a broken system or reputation later is far greater. At Cowrywise, we spent time upfront getting the preliminary things right. We established trust via our engineering, and it saved us tons of operational pain down the road.

Some might think transparency is mostly a UI concern. Do you agree?

Not at all. Transparency in tech should not be limited to clear charts, easy-to-read dashboards and FAQ pages. From an engineering standpoint, transparency means that user actions should trigger predictable system behaviour. Transparency also means that human-readable error messages are surfaced, not hidden. It also means that downtime is communicated, not concealed. I remember working on our notification feature, a system that sends personalised alerts for savings, withdrawals, plan maturity, and investment activity. It wasn’t just about keeping users informed. It was about giving them confidence that their money was being tracked and managed responsibly. Generally speaking, engineering in Nigeria requires a different mindset. Silence isn’t golden; it’s suspicious. Users expect to be kept in the loop, and when they aren’t, trust begins to erode.

You mentioned that engineering in Nigeria requires a different mindset. What do you mean?

Engineering in Nigerian fintech isn’t just about scale or performance. It’s about sensitivity. Many users are first-time investors. Some put in N500, others may put in N5 million, but the trust needed is the same, and it mustn’t be compromised.

Do you think Nigerian users have different trust thresholds than users elsewhere?

Definitely, and I think we subtly addressed this earlier. In Nigeria, people are cautious, and of course, it’s for good reason. They’ve seen banks collapse, wallets freeze, and savings vanish. So they approach fintechs with justified scepticism. That means you must overcommunicate, overvalidate, and overbuild for reliability. For every new feature, we weren’t just asking “does this work?”, we were asking “does this build or erode trust?”

What are practical ways fintechs can engineer transparency?

These are things I believe every Nigerian fintech should implement from day one: First is audit trails, every transaction should be traceable. Clear error handling is also very important. If a payment fails, don’t say “something went wrong”; say why. Provide real-time notifications, never leave users in the dark. Always have a fail-safe engineering mindset, that is, design for the worst, especially in Nigeria’s unpredictable infrastructure climate. Lastly, adopt a compliance-first thinking, build with regulation in mind from day one, not as a fix-it-later task.

What role do engineers play in making fintechs regulation-ready?

Engineers are the first line of compliance. Regulators may not read your code, but they feel the effects of how well it’s written. At Cowrywise, when building new investment features, we always make sure that the backend handles audit logging and transactional clarity with regulators in mind. That’s how fintechs should stay ahead of scrutiny, by engineering it into the system.

Sounds great. So, is trust also a growth strategy?

Absolutely. As VC funding gets tighter and user acquisition costs rise, trust has become the only sustainable growth hack. When people trust your platform, they refer others. When they don’t, even the best features in the world can’t save you. What keeps users returning isn’t just what your product can do; it’s what they believe and trust it won’t do.

What’s your final message to fellow Nigerian engineers and founders?

Nigerian fintechs must out-engineer not just their competition, but user doubt. And that starts with taking trust seriously at the code level. Let’s build systems that are not just scalable and sleek, but honest, predictable, and fair. Because in this ecosystem, trust isn’t a luxury. It’s our baseline.