Looking for a substitute for FastForex? Check out the top compiled payments & trading & currency exchange alternative APIs in the directory. Compare key features, developer experience, authentication methods, and uptime.
Development Tools, Payments, Trading & Currency Exchange
ExchangeRate-API is one of the most developer-friendly and widely-used currency exchange rate APIs available globally. Founded to provide reliable, accurate, and affordable foreign exchange data, the platform delivers real-time and historical exchange rates for 165 currencies across 200 countries — including the Nigerian Naira (NGN) — through a clean, well-documented RESTful API. It is particularly popular among Nigerian developers building fintech apps, e-commerce platforms, and financial tools that require accurate NGN conversion rates against major world currencies. **What ExchangeRate-API Does** The API provides two primary services: real-time exchange rates and historical rate data. The standard endpoint returns the latest exchange rates for all 165 supported currencies relative to a chosen base currency. The pair conversion endpoint returns the conversion rate between any two specific currencies. The enriched data endpoint includes additional localization information such as currency symbols, decimal separators, and locale-specific formatting — useful for building polished financial UIs. **Nigeria Support** NGN (Nigerian Naira) is fully supported as both a base and target currency. Nigerian developers can fetch the current USD/NGN, EUR/NGN, GBP/NGN rates in a single API call, or query any cross rate between NGN and any of the other 164 supported currencies. This makes ExchangeRate-API suitable for any Nigerian application that displays, converts, or tracks exchange rates. **Historical Data** ExchangeRate-API provides access to historical exchange rate data going back to 1990 — available on all plans including the free tier. This is a rare feature among free exchange rate APIs and makes the platform valuable for building Naira devaluation charts, historical FX analysis tools, and financial reports requiring period-specific exchange rates. **Authentication** The API uses API key authentication. Keys are issued immediately upon free sign-up with just an email address — no credit card required. The key is appended to every request URL as a query parameter. For developers who want to test without even signing up, ExchangeRate-API also offers a no-key open access endpoint that returns exchange rates without authentication, though at a lower rate limit. **Pricing Plans** ExchangeRate-API offers three tiers: - **Free**: $0/month — 1,500 requests/month, daily rate updates, no credit card required - **Pro**: $10/month ($100/year) — 30,000 requests/month, hourly rate updates - **Business**: $30/month ($300/year) — 125,000 requests/month, rate updates every 5 minutes, priority support All plans include historical data, enriched data, high availability, and a long-term support (LTS) commitment — meaning the API will not break without advance notice of deprecation. **Rate Limits** Rate limits are enforced on a monthly basis. The quota consumed is tracked and the remaining allowance is provided in response headers. When the monthly quota is exhausted, the API returns HTTP 429 (Too Many Requests). After 20 minutes without requests, rate-limited open-access (no-key) IPs are automatically unblocked. **No Sandbox (Test with Free Tier)** ExchangeRate-API does not provide a dedicated sandbox environment. Testing is done using the free tier itself — since the free tier requires no credit card and provides 1,500 real API calls per month, this is typically sufficient for development and integration testing. **Use Cases for Nigerian Developers** ExchangeRate-API is appropriate for any Nigerian project that needs exchange rate data as a data source rather than as a core payment processing feature. It does not process transactions — it only provides rate data. Common Nigerian use cases include: displaying live NGN rates on remittance platforms, powering multi-currency invoice tools, building Naira rate trackers, and auto-converting product prices in NGN to USD/EUR for international storefronts. **Important Limitation for Nigeria** ExchangeRate-API provides mid-market exchange rates sourced from financial data providers. These rates are the "official" interbank rates, not the parallel market (black market) NGN rate that often differs significantly in Nigeria. For apps that need to track or display the Nigerian parallel market rate, Monierate is a more appropriate data source. ExchangeRate-API's NGN rates reflect the official CBN/interbank rate. **Challenges** The free tier's daily update frequency means the rate data can be up to 24 hours stale — not suitable for high-frequency trading or real-time FX conversion in production payment flows. For production fintech use where real-time accuracy matters, the Pro plan ($10/month) with hourly updates is the minimum recommended tier. **Frequently Asked Questions** Q: Do I need a credit card to start? A: No. The free plan requires only an email address. Q: Does ExchangeRate-API support NGN? A: Yes. NGN is one of 165 supported currencies. Q: How current are the rates on the free plan? A: Updated once per day. For hourly updates, upgrade to Pro ($10/month). Q: Does it provide black market / parallel market NGN rates? A: No. Only official mid-market rates. Use Monierate for Nigerian parallel market rates. Q: Can I use this for live payment processing in production? A: For rate display yes, but not for actual transaction processing — this is a data API, not a payment gateway.
Payments, Development Tools
Fincra is a CBN PSSP-licensed payment gateway and fintech infrastructure company enabling African businesses to collect payments locally and cross-border across 50+ currencies in 40+ countries — with a single API covering 150+ countries globally. Fincra processes millions of API requests monthly and provides checkout, virtual accounts, direct debit, and cross-border payment products to businesses ranging from startups to enterprise clients. The company maintains a dedicated developer hub at FincraHub for the Nigerian and African developer community. What the API Does The Fincra API enables developers to: process card payments (Verve, Visa, Mastercard), bank transfers, M-Pesa, mobile money, and PayAttitude; issue multi-currency virtual accounts (NGN, USD, GBP, EUR) for collections from anywhere in the world; set up direct debit mandates for recurring collections from Nigerian bank accounts; initiate cross-border payouts in 50+ currencies; and receive real-time webhook notifications for all transaction events. The platform is designed as a single integration point for both local Nigerian payments and pan-African/international payment needs. How Developers Use It Developers access documentation at docs.fincra.com. Account creation is at fincra.com. Authentication uses API keys obtained from the Fincra Dashboard under Settings > API keys and webhook configuration tab. Sandbox and live environments are fully isolated — separate business IDs, API keys, and identifiers for each. Never use live credentials in the sandbox environment. The sandbox is available for full integration testing with simulated data. Pricing Custom pricing based on product type, transaction volume, markets, and risk profile. No public fee schedule. Contact Fincra sales to design a custom package. The pricing page at fincra.com/product-pricing offers a starting point for conversations. Rate Limits 50 API calls per second. HTTP 429 error returned for requests exceeding this limit. Authentication API keys from the Fincra Dashboard, separated by environment (sandbox vs. live). Keys are configured in the Profile > Settings > API keys section. Compliance CBN PSSP-licensed in Nigeria. Fincra is also incorporated in the US (Fincra Inc.) and holds appropriate licences for cross-border operations. Handles M-Pesa and mobile money under applicable East African regulations. Challenges and Gotchas (1) Pricing requires a sales conversation — no instant self-serve pricing. (2) Sandbox and live environments are fully isolated — you cannot transfer test accounts to live. (3) Rate limit of 50 req/sec may constrain high-frequency use cases — design API calls with batching in mind. (4) No USSD support. (5) Cross-border payouts pricing may vary significantly by corridor. Company Background Fincra Inc. is incorporated in the US and operates its Africa business from Lagos, Nigeria. The company is focused on solving Africa's payment fragmentation problem — where businesses traditionally needed separate integrations for each country. Fincra's FincraHub developer community is active in the Nigerian tech ecosystem. FAQs Q: What is Fincra's rate limit? A: 50 API calls per second. Exceeding this returns HTTP 429. Q: Does Fincra support M-Pesa? A: Yes. M-Pesa is supported as a payment method for East African collections. Q: Are sandbox and live environments the same? A: No. They are fully isolated with separate business IDs, API keys, and identifiers. You cannot transfer test data to live. Q: Does Fincra support direct debit for subscriptions? A: Yes. The Direct Debit API enables recurring collections from Nigerian bank accounts on a schedule.
Blockchain, Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
CoinGecko is the world's largest independent cryptocurrency data aggregator, providing comprehensive market data for over 10,000 cryptocurrencies, 600+ exchanges, and 1,000+ NFT collections through a well-documented REST API. Founded in 2014 and trusted by millions of users and thousands of applications globally, CoinGecko aggregates price data from centralized and decentralized exchanges to provide reliable, manipulation-resistant market data for the entire crypto ecosystem. For Nigerian developers and businesses building crypto-related applications, CoinGecko is the most accessible and comprehensive source of crypto market data with a genuinely useful free tier. Nigeria has one of the highest per-capita cryptocurrency adoption rates in the world, driven by use cases including cross-border remittances, inflation hedging, e-commerce payments, and speculative trading. Nigerian crypto users trade a wide variety of assets — Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, USDT, USDC, and hundreds of altcoins — creating demand for portfolio trackers, price displays, trading tools, and crypto news aggregators that need reliable price data. CoinGecko covers all assets that Nigerian users are likely to hold or trade, including stablecoins critical for Nigerian users managing foreign exchange risk. The /simple/price endpoint is the most commonly used API for Nigerian applications — it returns current prices for specified coins in specified currencies including NGN (Nigerian Naira). Displaying portfolio values in naira is important for Nigerian users who think about their crypto holdings in the context of their domestic purchasing power. With NGN price conversion, a Nigerian portfolio tracker can show "Your Bitcoin is worth ₦28,400,000" rather than requiring users to mentally convert from USD. Historical price data via the /coins/{id}/market_chart endpoint provides time-series price, market cap, and volume data for any coin over any time period. This is the foundation for rendering price charts — giving Nigerian crypto apps the data needed for day charts, week charts, month charts, and custom timeframe views. OHLCV (open, high, low, close, volume) data is available for candlestick chart rendering. Market data endpoints return global market overview — total market cap, Bitcoin dominance, DeFi market cap, and trending metrics. Exchange data shows 24-hour trading volumes for hundreds of exchanges, including data for exchanges popular with Nigerian traders. Trending coins endpoint returns the top 7 most searched coins on CoinGecko over the past 24 hours — a useful signal for Nigerian crypto community features showing what the market is focused on. NFT floor price data from CoinGecko covers major NFT collections, providing floor prices in ETH and USD. Nigerian NFT collectors and marketplace operators can use this data to display current floor prices for popular collections without needing separate NFT-specific data providers for pricing. The free Demo API key provides 30 requests per minute and 10,000 requests per month — sufficient for small-to-medium Nigerian applications. The key is obtained after account registration on coingecko.com. For applications requiring higher throughput, Pro plans start at $129/month with 500 requests per minute and priority support. Pro API also unlocks additional endpoints including historical OHLCV with more granularity, on-chain DEX data, and advanced exchange analytics. CoinGecko's data quality is generally considered reliable and manipulation-resistant because it aggregates from many sources and applies algorithms to detect and exclude wash trading. For Nigerian developers needing trustworthy price data for portfolio displays, educational platforms, and analytics tools (rather than trading execution), CoinGecko's methodology is appropriate. For trading applications requiring institutional-grade data with SLA commitments, professional data providers with formal agreements may be more suitable.
Blockchain, Trading & Currency Exchange
Busha is Nigeria's first SEC-licensed digital asset platform offering crypto infrastructure for businesses and developers across Africa. The company operates two distinct API products: the Commerce API for accepting crypto payments, and the Business API for building comprehensive crypto wallets, on/off-ramps, and treasury management tools. Busha supports seven African currency corridors including NGN (Nigeria), KES (Kenya), GHS (Ghana), UGX (Uganda), TZS (Tanzania), XOF (West Africa CFA franc), and RWF (Rwanda) — making it one of the broadest multi-corridor crypto APIs on the continent. What the API Does The Busha Commerce API enables businesses to accept crypto payments from customers and settle proceeds to their accounts. It supports crypto deposits, currency conversion, and payouts via a RESTful interface. The Business API goes further — supporting full wallet management, on-ramp (fiat to crypto), off-ramp (crypto to fiat), and multi-currency treasury operations. Busha also offers stablecoin holdings as an inflation hedge tool and corporate card issuance for expense management. How Developers Use It Developers access the Commerce API documentation at developers.commerce.busha.co and the Business API at docs.busha.io. Authentication is via API keys — specifically the X-BC-API-KEY header for Commerce API requests. Keys are obtained from the Settings > API Keys section of the Busha dashboard. The API follows REST conventions with JSON payloads over HTTPS. A sandbox environment is available for testing before going live. Pricing Fiat transactions in Nigeria: NGN 150 flat deposit fee; NGN 107.50 withdrawal fee (inclusive of 7.5% VAT). Crypto withdrawal fees vary by network (e.g., 0.00005 BTC for Bitcoin withdrawals). No public monthly API subscription fee — enterprise Business API access requires contacting Busha directly. Authentication Commerce API uses the X-BC-API-KEY header. Keys can be either a secret key or a public key depending on the operation. Secret keys are used for server-side operations; public keys for client-side. Compliance Busha holds a license from the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), making it the first digital asset operator licensed by the SEC in Nigeria. This is a major compliance advantage for businesses that need to work with a regulated crypto platform. The company complies with Nigerian AML/KYC requirements and requires KYC verification for all business partners. Challenges and Gotchas (1) Commerce API and Business API are separate products with separate documentation — do not confuse them. (2) Rate limits are not publicly documented — high-volume integrations should confirm limits with Busha directly. (3) Fiat settlement is to NGN bank accounts only for Nigeria — no direct USD wire. (4) Enterprise Business API access may require more extensive onboarding than Commerce API. (5) Crypto volatility between deposit and conversion can affect settlement amounts if using non-stablecoins. Company Background Busha was founded in Nigeria and is headquartered in Lagos. The company began as a consumer crypto exchange and expanded into B2B crypto infrastructure, becoming the first platform to obtain an SEC digital asset operating licence in Nigeria. Busha targets both consumer users and business clients, with a growing enterprise segment offering treasury and payment APIs. FAQs Q: Is Busha regulated in Nigeria? A: Yes. Busha is Nigeria's first SEC-licensed digital asset platform, providing strong regulatory assurance for business partners. Q: What is the difference between Commerce API and Business API? A: Commerce API is for accepting crypto payments from customers. Business API provides full wallet, on/off-ramp, and treasury infrastructure for building your own crypto-enabled products. Q: Is there a sandbox for testing? A: Yes. Busha provides a sandbox environment for development and testing before production. Q: Can I use Busha to pay suppliers in Kenya from Nigeria? A: Yes. Busha supports cross-corridor settlements between NGN, KES, GHS, and other African currencies via crypto-backed rails. Q: What cryptocurrencies are supported? A: Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, USDC, BNB, Solana, and other major assets are supported across multiple blockchain networks.
Data Validation, Trading & Currency Exchange
SendByte is a transactional email API built specifically for African developers and businesses, distinguished from global providers like SendGrid, Mailgun, and Resend by fixed Naira-denominated pricing that doesn't move when the exchange rate does — SendByte absorbs the FX risk itself rather than passing dollar-price volatility on to Nigerian customers. The platform is positioned explicitly as "a Naira-priced Resend for Africa," targeting the gap between expensive dollar-billed global email APIs and local options that are mostly no-code dashboards or narrow OTP-token add-ons rather than full transactional email infrastructure. Infrastructure is hosted in Africa rather than a US region, with API ingestion at the Nigerian edge via Cloudflare (~50ms) rather than routing through Virginia or Europe. This matters for Nigerian fintechs and SaaS platforms with NDPR (Nigeria Data Protection Regulation) obligations, since data residency is built into the core product rather than requiring a separate compliance workaround. The platform advertises AES-256 encryption at rest, TLS 1.2+ in transit, and audit logs on every dashboard action. Domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) is generated and verified automatically rather than left to the developer to configure by hand — SendByte provides the DNS records to add, checks them automatically, and manages per-domain sender reputation with a branded Return-Path. New sending domains go through a warm-up period, with real-time status visible in the dashboard rather than being a black box. Deliverability is measured, not just promised: SendByte runs seed inboxes at the major providers Nigerian users actually use (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud Mail, Zoho Mail) and reports where mail actually lands as a dashboard metric, rather than relying on a generic industry-wide deliverability claim. Every email's full lifecycle — queued, sent, delivered (with the actual SMTP response from the receiving server), opened, clicked, bounced, or complained — is visible as a timeline, with open and click tracking available per project (off by default, so OTP and receipt sends can stay untracked for privacy). The API surface is deliberately small: one POST request to send an email, with sub-100ms API response time since delivery itself happens asynchronously. Every lifecycle event (queued, sent, delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, complained) is delivered as an HMAC-signed, replayable webhook, and every API error follows one consistent shape with a link to its own documentation page. Idempotency keys on the send endpoint mean a request can be safely retried without risk of double-sending. A full-parity sandbox mode (using sk_test_ keys) simulates the entire pipeline — including visible logs — without requiring a verified domain or sending real email, letting a developer send their first test email within minutes of signing up. Official typed SDKs are available for Node.js, Python, PHP, and Go, with a Ruby SDK on the public roadmap; a plain REST API (api.sendbyte.africa/v1) covers every language not directly supported. Documentation is hosted on Mintlify with a full API reference, SDK guides, and step-by-step guides for domain verification, webhooks, and idempotency. Billing is Naira-denominated across every tier and paid via Paystack or Flutterwave on a normal Nigerian card, activating within about a second with no invoices to chase. The free tier (3,000 emails/month, no card required) is enough to fully evaluate the product; paid tiers scale from ₦2,000/month up to ₦200,000/month for 1 million emails/month with a 99.9% uptime SLA, and a pay-as-you-go option (₦300 per 1,000 emails, ₦1,000 minimum top-up, balance never expires) suits low-volume production apps that don't want a monthly commitment. Add-ons (dedicated IPs, extra log retention, a custom tracking domain, an NDPR Data Processing Agreement, and managed IP warm-up) are priced the same fixed-Naira way rather than bundled into opaque enterprise tiers.
Banking & Fintech, Trading & Currency Exchange
CurrencyLayer is one of the most widely-used and long-established exchange rate APIs in the world, providing real-time and historical foreign exchange data for 168 currencies and precious metals. Now owned and operated by APILayer — a platform aggregating developer APIs across multiple categories — CurrencyLayer benefits from enterprise-grade infrastructure, high availability, and a large developer community built up over years of operation. Nigerian Naira (NGN) is fully supported as both a source and target currency. **What CurrencyLayer Does** CurrencyLayer delivers exchange rate data sourced from banks and commercial data providers, providing accurate mid-market rates for 168 world currencies alongside precious metals including gold (XAU), silver (XAG), platinum (XPT), and palladium (XPD). The API supports real-time rate queries, historical rate lookups for any past date, and currency conversion calculations. All responses are delivered in JSON format via simple HTTPS GET requests. **Nigeria Support** NGN (Nigerian Naira) is one of 168 supported currencies. On paid plans (Basic and above), NGN can be used as the base currency — allowing Nigerian apps to fetch NGN-denominated rates for all other currencies in a single call. On the free plan, the base currency is locked to USD (developers can still get NGN rates but must calculate conversions from the USD base). **Authentication** API access requires an API key, which is appended to all request URLs as the access_key query parameter (e.g., ?access_key=YOUR_KEY). API keys are issued immediately upon free signup at currencylayer.com. The service uses HTTPS for all requests to protect key confidentiality. **Pricing Plans** CurrencyLayer offers five tiers: - **Free**: 100 API calls/month, USD base currency only, hourly update frequency - **Basic**: $13.99/month — 10,000 calls/month, all 168 base currencies, conversion endpoint - **Professional**: $52.99/month — 100,000 calls/month, 10-minute rate updates - **Professional Plus**: $84.99/month — 500,000 calls/month, 60-second rate updates - **Enterprise**: Custom pricing for very high volume requirements The critical limitation of the free plan is the USD-only base currency restriction. Nigerian developers who need NGN as a base currency (e.g., to display NGN/USD rather than USD/NGN) must upgrade to at least the Basic plan ($13.99/month). **Update Frequency** Like ExchangeRate-API and other tiered providers, CurrencyLayer's rate freshness scales with plan: - Free and Basic: Updated every 60 minutes - Professional: Updated every 10 minutes - Professional Plus: Updated every 60 seconds For production Nigerian fintech applications requiring near real-time accuracy, the Professional Plus plan's 60-second updates are appropriate. **Historical Data** Historical exchange rate data is available on paid plans, enabling developers to query the exact NGN exchange rate on any specific past date. This is critical for Nigerian businesses that need to record foreign-currency transactions at the exchange rate prevailing on the transaction date — a requirement under IFRS accounting standards used by many Nigerian companies. **Precious Metals** CurrencyLayer is one of the few exchange rate APIs that includes gold and silver prices in its currency list. Gold (XAU) and silver (XAG) prices are returned in the same API response as fiat currencies, making CurrencyLayer useful for Nigerian commodity investment platforms and jewellery businesses that need to track both precious metal values and NGN FX rates. **APILayer Ecosystem** As part of the APILayer product suite, CurrencyLayer users can manage their API key, view usage analytics, and access support through the APILayer dashboard. APILayer also offers complementary APIs (VAT rates, IP geolocation, etc.) that can be purchased and managed in the same account — convenient for developers building multi-feature financial applications. **Important Limitation for Nigeria** CurrencyLayer provides official mid-market exchange rates from banks and data providers. It does not provide Nigerian parallel market (black market) or Bureau de Change rates. In periods of significant Naira volatility or divergence between official and parallel rates, CurrencyLayer rates may not reflect what Nigerian consumers or informal businesses actually transact at. For parallel market tracking, use Monierate. **Comparison with ExchangeRate-API** CurrencyLayer is older and more widely deployed but has a more restrictive free tier (100 calls vs. 1,500 calls on ExchangeRate-API). The Basic plan at $13.99/month is more expensive than ExchangeRate-API Pro at $10/month for comparable features. CurrencyLayer's advantage is the inclusion of precious metals and the APILayer ecosystem. Choose CurrencyLayer if precious metals rates or APILayer ecosystem integration matter; choose ExchangeRate-API for a more generous free tier and lower entry-level paid pricing. **Frequently Asked Questions** Q: Can I use NGN as a base currency on the free plan? A: No. The free plan is locked to USD as the base currency. Upgrade to Basic ($13.99/month) for NGN base currency support. Q: Does CurrencyLayer include gold prices? A: Yes. Gold (XAU), silver (XAG), platinum (XPT), and palladium (XPD) are included in the 168-currency response. Q: How do I authenticate API requests? A: Append your API key as access_key=[YOUR_KEY] in the request URL query string. Q: Is there a sandbox for testing? A: No dedicated sandbox — testing uses the live API with free tier credentials. Q: Who owns CurrencyLayer? A: CurrencyLayer is owned by APILayer, a platform aggregating developer-focused APIs.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Foreign exchange and payment processing API for businesses. Multigate provides APIs for currency exchange, money transfers, and cross-border payments. Enables businesses to manage international transactions and FX exposure with competitive rates.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Frankfurter is a free, open-source currency exchange rates API built on top of official European Central Bank reference exchange rate data. The project delivers ECB foreign exchange rates through a clean, modern REST API with no registration requirement, no API key, and no rate limits documented — offering a completely frictionless entry point for developers who need reliable currency conversion data powered by one of the world most authoritative central bank rate sources. The European Central Bank publishes official reference exchange rates for 32 currencies against the Euro on each business day at approximately 16:00 CET. These reference rates are computed from the aggregate of market rates reported by financial institutions across the eurozone, making them the official benchmark for euro currency conversions in European financial reporting and compliance contexts. Frankfurter exposes these ECB rates through a straightforward REST API that makes accessing them as simple as an HTTP GET request. The latest rates endpoint returns the most recently published ECB exchange rate set for all supported currencies relative to any specified base currency. By default, rates are base EUR, but any supported currency can be used as the base by specifying it in the request parameter. This flexibility allows applications to retrieve NGN/USD, EUR/GBP, or any other combination without client-side conversion math. The response is a clean JSON object with ISO 4217 currency codes as keys and decimal rate values. Historical rates are accessible for any date from January 4, 1999, when the ECB began publishing its reference rates, through the present. This exceptional historical depth of over 25 years of official ECB rates supports the most demanding historical analysis use cases. Nigerian financial researchers studying the long-term trajectory of major currencies, academics modeling currency relationships, or developers building historical FX analysis tools for Nigerian businesses with international exposure can query any specific date or date range within this extensive archive. Time series queries retrieve exchange rates across a date range in a single request, returning a day-by-day array of rate sets between the start and end dates. This is more efficient than making individual date queries for each day in a range and enables building currency trend charts, calculating moving averages, or analyzing rate volatility across specific periods of interest. A currency conversion endpoint simplifies the most common use case by accepting an amount, source currency, and target currency and returning the converted amount directly. This eliminates client-side conversion logic for applications where only the final converted value is needed. It is important to note that Frankfurter covers 32 currencies, and the Nigerian Naira is not among them. The ECB reference rate set covers major traded currencies primarily from developed markets. For applications specifically needing NGN exchange rates, a dedicated currency API with NGN support would be more appropriate. However, for Nigerian businesses primarily working with EUR, USD, GBP, CHF, JPY, and other major ECB-covered currencies, Frankfurter provides official-quality rate data at zero cost. The open-source nature of Frankfurter means the complete server-side codebase is publicly available. Organizations requiring guaranteed availability, data sovereignty, or control over the rate data pipeline can self-host Frankfurter on their own infrastructure, fetching directly from the ECB and serving through their own API endpoint. This self-hosting option is particularly relevant for Nigerian financial institutions subject to regulatory requirements about external data dependencies. For Nigerian developers building personal finance tools, business productivity applications, or learning projects involving international currency handling, Frankfurter offers immediate, zero-cost access to authoritative exchange rate data that is suitable for display and educational purposes without the overhead of account management.
Trading & Currency Exchange
Fixer.io is one of the most widely used foreign exchange rate APIs in the developer community, providing real-time and historical exchange rate data for over 170 currencies with a track record of reliability that has made it a trusted foundation for thousands of commercial financial applications globally. Built and maintained by APilayer, Fixer.io has evolved from a simple ECB rate proxy into a comprehensive FX data service aggregating rates from financial data providers with global coverage. The API provides a latest rates endpoint that returns current exchange rates for all supported currencies against a specified base currency. On the free plan, EUR is the only available base currency — reflecting Fixer.io's origins as an ECB rate service — but paid plans unlock any currency as base including the Nigerian Naira, US Dollar, British Pound, and all other supported currencies. For Nigerian applications where showing Naira as the base currency matters for user experience, upgrading to a paid plan enables NGN-based rate tables that are immediately intuitive to Nigerian users. Historical rates are accessible through a date parameter that retrieves the exchange rates that were in effect on any past date. Fixer.io maintains an extensive historical database covering many years of past rates, enabling applications to reconstruct the Naira exchange rate history, calculate the cost of historical foreign currency transactions, or build trend analysis features. Nigerian accountants and financial controllers preparing comparative financial statements need accurate historical rates for the periods being compared, and Fixer.io provides this data reliably. The time-series endpoint enables querying exchange rates across a date range, returning rates for each day between the start and end dates in a single API response. This time-series data powers trend charts, moving average calculations, and volatility analysis. For Nigerian financial professionals analyzing currency trends to inform hedging decisions or procurement timing, time-series data provides the raw material for meaningful analysis without requiring day-by-day API queries. The fluctuation endpoint is a unique Fixer.io feature that returns the change in exchange rates between two dates, expressing both absolute change and percentage change for each currency. For Nigerian import businesses monitoring how the Naira has moved against supplier currencies over a given period, the fluctuation endpoint provides a direct comparison without requiring the client application to calculate differences from raw rate data. Currency conversion is directly supported through a dedicated convert endpoint that accepts source and target currency codes and an amount, returning the converted value calculated at current rates. This endpoint streamlines implementation for applications where only the final converted amount is needed rather than access to the underlying rate data. Fixer.io is available through a freemium model where the free plan provides access to the core functionality with EUR as the only base currency. Professional plans unlock additional base currencies including NGN, increase request frequency, and enable access to historical data, time-series, and fluctuation endpoints. The pricing is transparent and competitive with comparable FX data services, making it accessible for Nigerian fintech startups at various stages of growth. Nigerian payment processors, fintech platforms, accounting software vendors, and e-commerce developers have deployed Fixer.io as the exchange rate data backbone for their products. The API's extensive documentation, code samples in multiple languages, and the large developer community means that integration questions have usually already been answered in forums and documentation. API key authentication with straightforward query parameters and consistent JSON responses makes Fixer.io one of the fastest currency APIs to integrate into new Nigerian applications.
eCommerce, Payments, Development Tools
Square API is a comprehensive payment and commerce platform API from Square, Inc. (now Block, Inc.) that enables developers to build custom point-of-sale applications, online payment flows, inventory management systems, subscription billing, and retail commerce solutions. Square provides a deeply integrated suite of commerce APIs covering payments, orders, inventory, customer management, loyalty programs, and employee management that work together to provide a complete retail and services business management platform. IMPORTANT NOTE FOR NIGERIAN DEVELOPERS: Square does not currently operate in Nigeria and does not support Nigerian merchants registering for Square accounts, processing NGN transactions, or receiving settlements to Nigerian bank accounts. Square operates in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, France, Spain, and Ireland only. Nigerian businesses looking for equivalent payment processing capabilities should use Nigerian-licensed alternatives such as Paystack, Flutterwave, Monnify, or Kora. Despite not supporting Nigeria directly, Square API is documented here for several relevant reasons. First, Nigerian tech professionals working for international companies, remote contractors, and developers building products for non-Nigerian markets frequently work with Square. Second, Nigerian developers building applications for clients in Square-supported markets need API documentation to understand the integration requirements. Third, the architectural patterns used by Square — particularly their Payments API, Web Payments SDK, and order management system — are studied by Nigerian developers learning payment system design. The Square Payments API processes card-not-present payments through the Web Payments SDK (a JavaScript library that renders a PCI-compliant card entry form in web browsers) and the In-App Payments SDK (for iOS and Android native apps). These SDKs handle card data capture and tokenization in the browser or app, then pass a payment token to the backend which makes a charge call to the Square Payments API without sensitive card data ever touching the developer's servers. This architecture demonstrates PCI compliance best practices relevant to payment developers globally. Square Orders API provides comprehensive order lifecycle management: creating orders with line items, modifiers, and taxes, updating order status, applying discounts, processing partial fulfillments, and attaching payments to orders. This orders-centric model — where payments fulfill orders rather than existing independently — is architecturally different from many payment APIs and represents a more complete retail commerce model that connects inventory, pricing, and payment into a unified order record. Square Inventory API tracks product stock levels across multiple locations, providing real-time inventory counts, adjustment tracking, and low-stock alerting. For developers building multi-location retail management systems in Square-supported markets, the inventory API enables the stock synchronization between physical and online sales channels that prevents overselling and allows accurate availability display. Square Subscriptions API handles recurring billing, creating subscription plans with billing cadences, trial periods, and pricing tiers, and automatically charging customers on schedule. Subscription webhooks notify the integrating application of billing events, failed payments, and subscription status changes. This recurring billing infrastructure is used by subscription box services, membership businesses, and SaaS products operating in Square markets. Square Loyalty API builds customer loyalty programs directly into the payment flow, automatically awarding points on eligible purchases, tracking redemption history, and applying loyalty discounts at checkout. For businesses in Square-supported markets wanting to reward repeat customers without separate loyalty program infrastructure, the integrated loyalty system captures purchase data automatically through the normal payment flow. Nigerian developers can access Square's sandbox environment freely for learning and testing purposes, using test credentials to exercise all API endpoints without processing real payments.
Blockchain, Trading & Currency Exchange
Sequence is a comprehensive Web3 infrastructure platform specifically designed for games and consumer applications, providing smart wallet technology, NFT tools, marketplace infrastructure, fiat on-ramps, and a multi-chain indexer under one unified platform. Where general-purpose Web3 tools like Thirdweb focus broadly on developer experience, Sequence goes deep on the gaming and consumer use case — with Unity and Unreal Engine SDKs, in-game marketplace contracts, and player-friendly onboarding flows that hide crypto complexity entirely from end users. For Nigerian game developers and NFT platforms, Sequence solves the most critical problem in Web3 consumer adoption: friction. The Nigerian gaming market is large and mobile-first, with millions of players who have smartphones but no crypto wallets, no understanding of gas fees, and no interest in learning blockchain concepts just to play a game. Sequence's embedded smart wallet eliminates every barrier: players sign in with email or Google, receive a wallet automatically, and play the game. The crypto infrastructure is entirely invisible until the player chooses to withdraw or trade their earned assets. The Sequence Smart Wallet is a smart contract wallet (built on ERC-4337 account abstraction) that is created for every new user automatically. Unlike externally owned accounts (EOAs) like MetaMask, smart contract wallets support gasless transactions (the game developer sponsors gas), social recovery (the user can recover their wallet via email if they lose access), and batched transactions (multiple operations in one transaction). For Nigerian game studios, sponsoring gas fees for players is a business decision similar to offering free shipping — it removes a barrier that would otherwise prevent most users from engaging. The Embedded Marketplace allows Nigerian NFT platforms and games to deploy their own branded marketplace — for buying, selling, and auctioning NFTs — without building marketplace smart contracts from scratch. The marketplace supports fixed-price listings, Dutch auctions, and offer-based trading across any NFT collection. It is deeply integrated with the Sequence wallet, so a player who earns an NFT in-game can immediately list it for sale in the game's marketplace without leaving the application. The NFT Minting API allows Nigerian developers to mint NFTs programmatically via API calls — no smart contract interaction required from the application layer. When a player achieves a milestone or makes a purchase, the game server calls the Sequence Minting API with the player's wallet address and the token metadata, and the NFT is minted on-chain. This server-side minting model is far simpler than requiring the player to initiate a blockchain transaction. The Fiat On-Ramp integration enables players to purchase cryptocurrency or in-game tokens directly with a debit/credit card through the Sequence interface. For Nigerian players who want to buy in-game items without managing a separate crypto exchange account, this is the most convenient entry point. Card payment support for Nigerian Verve and Visa cards (subject to issuer restrictions) broadens the addressable market for Nigerian Web3 games. The Multi-Chain Indexer is a high-performance API for querying token balances, NFT ownership, and transaction history across Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, and other chains. It indexes data much faster than querying blockchain nodes directly and provides a consistent API structure regardless of chain. Nigerian game backends can use the indexer to check a player's on-chain inventory, verify NFT ownership before granting in-game benefits, and display portfolio values. The free tier and affordable Growth plan ($149/month) make Sequence viable for Nigerian indie game studios and startups in early stages, with clear upgrade paths as player counts grow.
Banking & Fintech, Trading & Currency Exchange
FxRatesAPI is a foreign exchange rate data provider offering real-time, historical, and time-series exchange rate data for over 180 currencies through a clean REST API. The service aggregates rates from multiple financial data sources and delivers accurate exchange rates for currency conversion, price display, accounting, and financial analytics applications. For Nigerian developers and businesses building applications that deal with multiple currencies — which describes the majority of Nigerian fintech, e-commerce, and accounting software — FxRatesAPI provides reliable NGN currency data alongside all major global currencies. Nigeria's position as Africa's largest economy means that currency exchange rates are not just a technical feature — they are a core business concern. The USD/NGN exchange rate directly affects the cost of imported goods displayed on Nigerian e-commerce platforms, the naira value of remittances sent from Nigerians in the diaspora, the financial reporting of Nigerian companies with foreign currency revenues, and the investment decisions of Nigerians holding foreign currency assets. An accurate, current USD/NGN rate, updated at least daily, is a fundamental requirement for dozens of categories of Nigerian applications. The /latest endpoint returns current exchange rates for all 180+ supported currencies from a specified base currency. To get the current USD/NGN rate, a Nigerian application calls the endpoint with base=USD and receives the NGN rate in the response. The same call returns rates for EUR, GBP, JPY, and every other supported currency simultaneously — making it straightforward to build multi-currency displays that show prices in multiple currencies at once. The /convert endpoint handles currency conversion arithmetic — pass the amount, the source currency, and the target currency, and FxRatesAPI returns the converted amount at the current rate. For Nigerian e-commerce platforms that need to convert a product price from USD to NGN for display, this eliminates client-side conversion code and ensures the rate used is always current. Historical exchange rate data is available via the /historical endpoint, returning rates for any past date. This is critical for Nigerian accounting and ERP applications that need to record transactions at the exchange rate on the transaction date — a requirement for Nigerian financial reporting that must comply with both IFRS standards and FIRS (Federal Inland Revenue Service) guidelines on foreign currency transactions. The /timeseries endpoint returns exchange rate data over a range of dates with daily resolution, enabling trend analysis and charting. For Nigerian currency analytics tools, this data powers time-series charts showing the USD/NGN rate history — valuable context for Nigerians trying to understand naira depreciation trends and optimize their currency holding decisions. Fluctuation data via the /fluctuation endpoint shows the change in exchange rates over a specified period — useful for Nigerian fintech apps that want to display "the naira weakened 2.3% against the dollar this week" type of contextual information alongside current rates. The free plan provides 1,500 requests per month with daily rate resolution — sufficient for low-traffic applications where real-time rates are not critical. For applications needing hourly or minute-level rate updates (forex comparison tools, live price displays on high-traffic Nigerian e-commerce sites), the Basic plan at $9.99/month provides up to 100,000 requests and hourly resolution. The Professional plan at $29.99/month provides minute-level resolution and up to 1 million requests per month — appropriate for Nigerian fintech applications with significant user traffic. All endpoints accept a simple api_key query parameter with no request signing required, making FxRatesAPI one of the quickest currency data integrations available for Nigerian developers. Responses are JSON by default with XML available as an alternative format.
Blockchain, Trading & Currency Exchange
Tatum is a blockchain-as-a-service platform providing a unified REST API that enables developers to interact with over 100 blockchain networks — including Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Tron, Solana, Polygon, Cardano, XRP, Dogecoin, and dozens more — through a single consistent API structure. Rather than learning the specific RPC interfaces, SDK libraries, and node management requirements for each blockchain, Nigerian developers using Tatum interact with every chain through the same endpoint patterns. This dramatically reduces the time required to build multi-chain cryptocurrency wallets, exchanges, and payment systems. Nigeria's position as Africa's largest crypto market means Nigerian developers frequently need to support multiple blockchains simultaneously. Nigerian users hold Bitcoin as a store of value, USDT on Tron for cheap transfers, Ethereum for DeFi access, and BNB Chain for affordable trading. A wallet application serving Nigerian users must support all of these chains. Without Tatum, building multi-chain support means separate integrations for each blockchain — different RPC formats, different transaction structures, different fee models, different SDK libraries. With Tatum, one API key and one consistent REST interface handles everything. Wallet generation through Tatum creates HD (hierarchical deterministic) wallets with master private keys and extended public keys for any supported blockchain. From a single mnemonic, developers can derive unlimited individual receiving addresses — the standard architecture for exchange and custodial wallet systems that need unique deposit addresses per user. Tatum handles the cryptographic complexity of key derivation for every chain, while the developer retains and stores the private key material securely. The Virtual Account system is Tatum's most powerful feature for exchange and wallet builders. Virtual accounts are an off-chain ledger system where user balances are tracked in Tatum's database rather than on the blockchain for every small transaction. Users can transfer balances between each other instantly and for free off-chain, while actual blockchain settlements happen in batches or when users withdraw. This is the architecture behind centralized exchanges — and Tatum makes it available to Nigerian exchange operators without building custom ledger infrastructure. Transaction broadcasting covers the full lifecycle: constructing a signed transaction (Tatum generates the raw transaction with correct nonce, gas, and fee parameters), signing it with the wallet's private key, and broadcasting it to the blockchain network. For Bitcoin, this means handling UTXO selection and change address management. For Ethereum, this means nonce management and gas estimation. Tatum abstracts all chain-specific mechanics. NFT operations include minting, transferring, burning, and querying NFTs across EVM chains and Solana. Nigerian NFT platforms can mint collections programmatically by calling Tatum's NFT API rather than deploying and managing smart contracts directly. Token operations support creating ERC-20 / BEP-20 tokens, transferring them, and checking balances — all through REST API calls. Webhook notifications alert Nigerian backend servers when specific blockchain events occur: incoming transactions to monitored addresses, transaction confirmations, NFT transfers, and smart contract events. This enables Nigerian exchanges and payment processors to detect deposits automatically without polling the blockchain. The free tier with 1 million credits per month and 5 requests per second is sufficient for Nigerian projects in early stages. Paid plans scale from $79/month to $599/month with higher throughput, and enterprise plans provide dedicated infrastructure with SLA guarantees for production Nigerian exchanges and fintech platforms.
Banking & Fintech, Development Tools, Payments
Stellas Microfinance Bank provides payment APIs and collections services focused on microfinance use cases. The Stellas MFB API enables payment processing and collection management for microfinance operations. Nigerian microfinance companies use Stellas APIs for payment processing.
Trading & Currency Exchange
CurrencyFreaks is a foreign exchange rate API providing real-time and historical currency data for over 150 global currencies, with particular value for Nigerian developers and businesses needing reliable Naira exchange rate data. The service aggregates rates from multiple financial data sources to deliver accurate mid-market rates with consistent uptime, making it a dependable choice for fintech applications, payment systems, and currency-aware business software. The API delivers current exchange rates across all supported currency pairs, with rates refreshed regularly throughout the trading day to track market movements. For applications where currency rate freshness matters — such as payment processing, order pricing, or customer-facing currency displays — CurrencyFreaks provides the up-to-date data needed to reflect actual market conditions rather than stale approximations. The Nigerian Naira is among the supported currencies, ensuring NGN/USD, NGN/EUR, NGN/GBP, and other critical Naira pairs are available for Nigerian applications. Historical exchange rate data is available from 2000 onwards, giving developers access to over two decades of FX rate history. This extensive archive is valuable for multiple use cases: financial modeling that requires long-term currency trend analysis, accounting systems that need to reconstruct historical transaction values at the exchange rates prevailing at the time of each transaction, and research applications analyzing the relationship between currency movements and economic events in Nigeria and globally. The historical depth is particularly significant for Nigerian context. The Naira has experienced several major devaluation episodes since 2000, including the 2016 exchange rate liberalization, the 2023 unification of official and parallel market rates, and subsequent volatility. Applications built for Nigerian financial analysis, research, or compliance can access the complete historical rate record through CurrencyFreaks to accurately model and document the impact of these exchange rate changes on business performance or asset values. Currency conversion is directly supported through a dedicated convert endpoint. Rather than retrieving raw rates and performing conversion on the client side, applications can submit a source currency, target currency, and amount and receive back the converted value. This simplifies integration for applications where only conversion functionality is needed, such as product pricing widgets, invoice currency selectors, or quick calculator features. For Nigerian e-commerce platforms running multicurrency storefronts, CurrencyFreaks enables automatic price adjustment in multiple currencies based on live rates. When a Nigerian business displays prices in USD for international customers or in GBP for diaspora buyers, using live rates ensures the foreign currency price accurately reflects the current Naira equivalent, protecting the business from pricing errors due to rate movements. Remittance service providers and mobile money platforms operating in Nigeria rely on accurate FX data to calculate and display the Naira amount recipients will receive. Compliance and transparency requirements in the Nigerian financial services sector mean that displayed rates must be accurate and traceable. CurrencyFreaks provides the rate data foundation while applications handle the display and audit trail requirements. The API uses simple API key authentication included in request query parameters or headers. The JSON response format is clean and consistent, with currency codes following ISO 4217 standards for interoperability. The free plan provides 1,000 monthly requests — sufficient for development, testing, and low-traffic applications — while paid plans scale up request limits to accommodate production workloads. Nigerian developers benefit from a straightforward onboarding process requiring only email registration to obtain a working API key.
Communications, Payments
CheapDataHub is a Nigerian VTU (Virtual Top-Up) platform that offers both a consumer-facing reseller app/website and a dedicated REST API for developers (documented separately at cheapdatahub.ng/api-for-developers/). The API lets developers programmatically purchase airtime and data bundles for MTN, Glo, Airtel and 9Mobile, pay electricity bills to Nigerian Distribution Companies (Discos) in prepaid and postpaid modes, subscribe to DSTV, GOTV and Startimes cable TV packages, and buy exam PINs for WAEC, NECO, NABTEB and JAMB. Developers sign up for an account and receive API keys automatically; there is no separate developer-application process. Documented endpoints include wallet balance lookup, airtime purchase, data purchase, electricity purchase, cable TV purchase, exam-PIN products/purchase, and transaction status/history, all served from a live base URL at cheapdatahub.ng/api/v1/resellers/ and consumed as JSON over HTTPS. A public plan-IDs page lists the numeric plan_id values (e.g. network, bundle size, validity, and price) that must be passed in data and cable-TV purchase requests, and CheapDataHub states these are kept up to date as network pricing changes. The platform supports real-time webhooks for transaction status changes (initiated, processing, successful, failed, refunded) so integrators can react to delivery outcomes asynchronously instead of polling. Documented error responses cover unauthorized access, insufficient wallet balance, duplicate requests, validation errors and server errors, and code samples are provided in PHP (cURL), JavaScript (Axios) and Python (Requests) for at least the airtime endpoint. CheapDataHub markets itself as a low-cost aggregator with claims of over 20,000 active users, 99.9% uptime and sub-2-second average delivery time, alongside a mobile app on Google Play and the App Store. It positions the API as suited to developers and small businesses building their own VTU resale platforms, school portals, or fintech-adjacent apps that need to sell airtime, data, bills or exam pins without negotiating directly with telcos, Discos or DStv/GOtv/Startimes.
Communications, Payments
eBills is a Nigerian digital payments platform, operated by FraNKAPPWeb Technologies and based in Awka, Nigeria, that lets businesses and developers programmatically sell VTU (Virtual Top-Up) services. The eBills API is a RESTful, JWT-authenticated API covering airtime top-ups for MTN, Glo, Airtel, and 9mobile; data bundles across all major Nigerian networks plus Smile; cable TV subscription renewals for DStv, GOtv, Startimes, and Showmax; electricity bill payments across roughly a dozen Nigerian distribution companies (including IKEDC, EKEDC, and KEDCO); recharge card (ePIN) printing for all networks; and betting wallet funding for platforms such as Bet9ja, SportyBet, and BetKing, among others. To integrate, a developer first creates a reseller account on the eBills platform and funds a wallet, then completes tiered KYC verification (email, BVN, or full identity verification) that governs daily transaction limits. API credentials are issued through a developer dashboard, and requests are authenticated using JWT bearer tokens obtained via a token endpoint, valid for seven days per token. Developers can optionally whitelist their server IPs for added security. eBills positions its API around cost savings: integrators pay zero service fees and receive discounted rates versus the standard consumer-facing prices on the site, spanning discounts on data, airtime, cable TV, electricity, ePINs, and betting funding. The platform also offers ancillary consumer services (bulk SMS, WASSCE/JAMB exam pin sales, and Chinese currency funding) that are not confirmed to be part of the developer API surface. eBills is aimed at Nigerian developers, fintech startups, and businesses that want to embed bill payment and airtime/data resale into their own apps or websites without dealing directly with telecom and utility billers, similar in category to other Nigerian VTU aggregator APIs.
Communications, Payments
GSubz is a Nigerian VTU (Virtual Top-Up) platform and API provider that lets developers integrate instant airtime recharge, mobile data bundle purchases, cable TV subscription payments (DStv, GOtv), and electricity bill payments into their own websites and applications. It supports the major Nigerian mobile networks - MTN, Glo, Airtel, and 9mobile - alongside utility billers, positioning itself as a reseller-friendly backend for VTU and bill payment businesses. The GSubz API is a straightforward REST-style HTTP API built around a small set of endpoints: `category` and `service` to discover available service types, `fields` and `plans` to retrieve required parameters and data/TV plans for a given service, `variation` to fetch pricing for a specific plan, and `pay`/`verify` to submit and confirm transactions. A `balance` endpoint lets integrators check their GSubz wallet balance programmatically. Payments are split into two models: flexible payments (like airtime, where the buyer sets the amount) and fixed payments (like data plans and TV subscriptions, where the amount is predetermined by the selected plan). Authentication is via a Bearer API key sent in the Authorization header of every request, obtained after registering a free GSubz account. Developers fund their account wallet and transactions are debited at GSubz's discounted resale rates rather than paying a separate API fee, making it economically similar to other Nigerian VTU resale platforms (e.g. VTpass, Sailmony). GSubz also operates a Chinese-goods dropshipping storefront under the same brand, but the API documentation itself is scoped strictly to VTU/bill-payment services (airtime, data, TV, electricity), which is what this listing covers. The documentation does not mention rate limits, IP whitelisting, or webhook/callback notifications for transaction status - developers should expect to poll the verify endpoint to confirm transaction outcomes. GSubz is aimed at Nigerian developers, resellers, and small businesses building VTU storefronts, WhatsApp/Telegram bots, school portals, or internal tools that need to sell airtime, data, cable TV, and electricity tokens programmatically to Nigerian end users.
Development Tools, Payments
Airtel Money pan-African mobile money API providing collections, remittances, payments, and disbursements across multiple African countries including Nigeria. Airtel Money enables businesses to integrate mobile money capabilities across Airtel's presence in 14+ African countries through a single unified API. Supports multi-country deployments for businesses operating across Africa with seamless cross-border mobile money transfers and localized payment experiences.
Banking & Fintech, Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
NGN Market API provides access to Nigerian financial market data including stock prices, foreign exchange rates, and market indices. The API enables developers to build financial applications with real-time and historical Nigerian market data. Nigerian fintech platforms, traders, and investment applications use NGN Market API to integrate naira-denominated market data and forex rates into their systems.
Communications, Payments
InstantMobileNG is a Nigerian Value Added Service (VAS) and VTU (Virtual Top-Up) platform that has operated since 2015, describing itself as one of the founding providers of VTU digital marketing business in Nigeria and claiming over 30,000 clients served. The company's core consumer-facing business is automated sale of airtime, mobile data bundles, cable TV subscriptions (DStv, GOtv, StarTimes), electricity bill payments, exam result-checker pins (WAEC/NECO), and instant bank transfers, alongside VTU reseller portal setup and affiliate programs. For developers, InstantMobileNG exposes an API so third-party websites and apps can plug directly into its VTU services rather than reselling through its portal manually. The documented API (hosted under a platform called MODATA, base path modata.com.ng/api/) uses bearer-token authentication and simple GET/POST endpoints, including POST /data/ for buying data bundles (network, mobile number, plan ID, ported-number flag) and POST /topup/ for airtime top-ups (network, amount, mobile number, VTU or Share-and-Sell type). Cable TV, electricity, and education (exam pin) services are also listed as integrable, though their endpoint-level documentation is thinner than the data and airtime endpoints. Access is gated behind payment: developers pick one of three one-time developer packages (₦10,000, ₦15,000, or ₦35,000), pay by bank transfer, then email their name, contact details, developer website address, and payment date to support for manual verification. Approval is stated to take 1-48 hours on business days, after which an API key/token and admin dashboard access are issued for monitoring transactions. There is no free trial or free API tier described anywhere on the site. InstantMobileNG is best understood as a straightforward, low-barrier VTU integration option for Nigerian developers and reseller-website operators who are comfortable with a manual, payment-gated onboarding process rather than instant self-serve signup, and who want a single provider covering airtime, data, cable TV, electricity, and exam pins.
Communications, Payments
Peyflex is a Nigerian VTU (Virtual Top-Up) and fintech platform operated by Peyflex Telecommunications Limited (RC 7796939), a private limited company registered with Nigeria's Corporate Affairs Commission in August 2024 and headquartered in Kakuri, Kaduna. Founded by Faith Amaole (Amaole Faith Adaeze), the company positions itself as unifying bills, data reselling, and related services into one platform for everyday users and resellers, available via its website and mobile app. Through its consumer platform, Peyflex offers mobile data bundle purchase/reselling (MTN, Airtel, Glo, 9mobile), airtime recharge, electricity bill/meter payments, cable TV subscriptions (GoTV, DStv, StarTimes), WAEC exam registration and result-checker PINs, betting account funding (e.g. SportyBet, Bet9ja-style platforms), cryptocurrency buy/sell, international data-only eSIMs, and virtual numbers for OTP verification. For developers and resellers, Peyflex provides a free 'Developer API' that lets third-party websites, apps, and reseller platforms integrate its VTU infrastructure directly. Access requires creating a Peyflex account, then generating a developer API token from the Developer API section of the user dashboard. As documented on Peyflex's Postman-hosted API reference, the API currently exposes endpoints for airtime top-up, data bundle purchase, cable TV subscriptions, electricity bill payment, exam PIN (ePIN) generation, and betting wallet funding; crypto, eSIM, and virtual-number endpoints are listed as 'coming soon' for the API even though those services exist on the main consumer platform. Peyflex markets the API as requiring no KYC to integrate or begin testing, and backs integration with a Postman documentation portal, an instructional video guide, and dedicated WhatsApp support (including account activation help and virtual meetings for developers who get stuck). Because pricing and discount tiers are built around reseller volume, the API is aimed primarily at Nigerian developers and resellers building their own VTU storefronts, bill-payment features, or fintech add-ons rather than at large-scale enterprise messaging or payment aggregation.
Communications, Payments
SME Plug is a Nigerian Virtual Top-Up (VTU) and data automation platform based in Ibadan, Oyo State, that lets resellers, digital vendors, and developers programmatically distribute airtime, SME/gifting data bundles, cable TV subscriptions, electricity tokens, and bulk SMS to customers across MTN, Airtel, Glo, and 9mobile. For data delivery, SME Plug offers three operating models: an automated SIM system that dispenses SME and gifting data straight from a registered SIM without needing a running device, a device-based mode that vends data through a connected/active phone, and a wallet-based reseller mode that requires no direct vending hardware at all. The platform also supports auto-subscription for recurring data renewals and bulk vending to many phone numbers in a single request. On the API side, SME Plug publishes a Postman collection documenting Bearer-token authenticated REST endpoints for checking wallet balance, retrieving the list of supported networks, and purchasing data plans. Every request can trigger a transaction webhook, configured from the account settings dashboard, that notifies the integrator's server of success or failure with fields such as status, reference, customer_reference, transaction type, beneficiary, memo and price — removing the need to poll for transaction status. Beyond the documented data API, the wider SME Plug dashboard advertises airtime top-up, cable TV subscriptions (DStv, GOtv, Startimes), electricity bill payment (prepaid tokens and postpaid billing), bulk SMS from 2.5 kobo per unit, and flat-fee (₦25) inter-account bank transfers. The platform also includes reseller and staff account management with activity tracking and real-time sales analytics, making it geared toward Nigerian VTU resellers and small digital-service businesses as much as toward individual API integrators.
Payments, Development Tools
Paystack is Nigeria's most widely adopted payment gateway API and is a subsidiary of Stripe, the global payments infrastructure company that acquired Paystack in 2020. Founded in 2015 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, Paystack was part of Y Combinator's 2016 batch and quickly became the default payment choice for Nigerian developers and businesses. The company is CBN-licensed and PCI-DSS compliant, and currently serves thousands of businesses across Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya. The Paystack API is RESTful and uses Bearer Token authentication. Every request must include an Authorization header with the format: Authorization: Bearer sk_live_xxxx (for production) or Authorization: Bearer sk_test_xxxx (for sandbox). API keys are obtained from the Paystack dashboard at dashboard.paystack.com. Paystack provides both public keys (used in client-side code to initialize the checkout) and secret keys (used server-side for all API calls). Developers must never expose the secret key in client-side code. The standard Paystack integration flow involves three steps: initialize a transaction server-side using the /transaction/initialize endpoint (passing email, amount in kobo, and optional metadata), redirect the user to the returned authorization URL or embed the Paystack inline popup using the JavaScript SDK, then verify the transaction on your server using /transaction/verify/:reference after the customer is redirected back. This three-step flow ensures transactions are validated server-side before fulfilling orders, preventing fraud and order manipulation. Paystack supports the widest range of payment channels of any Nigerian gateway: Verve, Visa, and Mastercard debit cards; bank transfer (pay by transfer); USSD (for customers without smartphones); mobile money (in Ghana); and QR code payments. The Paystack Checkout modal intelligently displays only the channels available for the customer's device and location. In terms of pricing, local card transactions cost 1.5% plus ₦100, capped at ₦2,000 per transaction. The ₦100 flat fee is waived for transactions of ₦2,500 or less. This means very small transactions (micro-payments) are effectively charged at 1.5% only. International card transactions cost 3.9% plus ₦100, with no cap. Bank transfers (receiving payments via bank account) are charged flat: ₦10 for amounts up to ₦5,000; ₦25 for ₦5,001 to ₦50,000; and ₦50 for amounts above ₦50,000. Outgoing transfers (disbursements) are: ₦10 for ₦0–₦5,000; ₦25 for ₦5,001–₦50,000; ₦50 for above ₦50,000. There are no setup fees and no monthly platform fees. Businesses processing more than ₦10 million per month are eligible for volume-based discounts by contacting Paystack enterprise support. The Paystack sandbox environment mirrors production exactly — all features available in live mode are available in test mode. This is a critical advantage for Nigerian developers who need to test subscription billing, split payments, and bulk transfers without using real money. Test mode uses test card numbers provided in the Paystack documentation and simulates bank transfer payments via a confirmation prompt. Paystack also provides a Subscriptions API that allows developers to create subscription plans with daily, weekly, monthly, or annual billing cycles. When a customer first pays, a subscription authorization token is generated and stored securely by Paystack. Subsequent charges happen automatically without requiring the customer to re-enter card details. This is the foundation for building SaaS billing, membership platforms, and digital subscription products in Nigeria. The Split Payments (multi-split) feature allows marketplace operators to automatically split collected revenue between multiple subaccounts at the time of transaction — specifying percentages or flat amounts for each recipient. This is commonly used by Nigerian food delivery platforms, logistics aggregators, and gig economy apps. The Bulk Transfers API enables disbursement to hundreds of Nigerian bank accounts in a single API call by submitting a list of transfer recipients. This is used for payroll, agent commissions, loan disbursements, and customer refunds. From a compliance standpoint, Paystack is PCI-DSS Level 1 certified — the highest level of payment card security certification. All card data is encrypted and processed on Paystack's infrastructure. Merchants are not required to be PCI-DSS certified themselves. Paystack operates under CBN supervision and complies with the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR). Webhook events from Paystack must be validated using the HMAC-SHA512 signature sent in the X-Paystack-Signature header. Developers should validate this signature before processing any webhook event. Paystack retries failed webhooks for up to 72 hours. Known challenges for Nigerian developers: (1) International card transactions have no cap on the 3.9% fee — high-value international payments can be expensive. (2) Bank transfer payments can take up to 30 minutes during bank downtime, so developers must handle pending states gracefully. (3) BVN and NIN verification are not built into Paystack directly — these require Dojah or Smile Identity as a separate integration. Frequently Asked Questions: Can I use Paystack without a registered business? Yes — individuals can create a starter account and start accepting payments. However, you will need to provide CAC documents to unlock higher transaction limits and settlements. Does Paystack support USD payments? Paystack processes international cards in USD, but settlements are in NGN after conversion. USD settlement is available only for Paystack International accounts. Can I process recurring payments automatically? Yes — use the Subscriptions API to save a customer authorization token and charge them on any schedule automatically. Is the test environment exactly like production? Yes — Paystack test mode has full feature parity with live mode, including subscriptions, splits, and bulk transfers.
Blockchain, Trading & Currency Exchange
Global cryptocurrency exchange with institutional-grade APIs and liquidity tools. Bitget provides comprehensive trading APIs, white-label solutions, and institutional features for fintechs and businesses wanting to integrate crypto trading. Strong platform for building crypto trading applications and investment platforms.
Trading & Currency Exchange
Fluentax CBN Exchange Rates API provides access to official exchange rates published by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), specifically the NFEM (Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market) window rates that represent the official spot rate for foreign currency transactions in Nigeria. These official CBN rates are distinct from black market or bureau de change rates — they are the legally mandated rates that Nigerian companies must use for specific regulatory and financial reporting purposes under CBN guidelines, FIRS tax regulations, and IFRS accounting standards applicable in Nigeria. The Central Bank of Nigeria publishes official exchange rates daily through the NFEM window, which since 2023 represents a unified market rate following the FX market liberalization that merged multiple rate windows into a single market-determined rate. This rate is the reference for all official foreign currency transactions, accounting entries, and tax calculations in Nigeria. Fluentax aggregates these official CBN daily rate publications and makes them accessible through a clean REST API, eliminating the need for developers to scrape the CBN website or manually update exchange rates in their systems. Accounting software integration is the primary commercial use case for the Fluentax CBN Exchange Rate API. Under IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) as adopted in Nigeria, companies must translate foreign currency transactions at the exchange rate prevailing on the transaction date, and must restate foreign currency monetary items at the closing rate at each reporting date. Nigerian ERP systems and accounting platforms can automate this rate retrieval by querying Fluentax for the official CBN rate on any given date, eliminating manual rate entry errors and ensuring compliance with accounting standards. Tax compliance for Nigerian businesses is directly supported by the Fluentax API. The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) requires that foreign currency transactions be reported in naira using officially approved exchange rates — typically the CBN rate — for corporate income tax returns, VAT filings, and transfer pricing documentation. Nigerian tax preparation software, ERP tax modules, and FIRS e-filing integrations can use Fluentax to automatically apply the correct CBN rate when computing naira equivalent values for foreign currency transactions included in tax filings. Historical CBN rate data accessible through Fluentax enables auditors and financial controllers to verify that the correct official rates were applied in prior period financial statements. Nigerian audit firms conducting annual statutory audits and forensic accountants investigating financial irregularities can pull historical CBN rates for any past date to verify clients' rate application, identify rate-based discrepancies, and support audit evidence documentation. Transfer pricing documentation in Nigeria, required for multinational companies under the FIRS Transfer Pricing Regulations, must express intercompany transactions in naira using official CBN rates. The Fluentax historical rate API simplifies this documentation by providing retrievable historical CBN rates for any transaction date, enabling multinational companies with Nigerian operations to compile complete transfer pricing records with official rate support. Fluentax operates a freemium model with free access to recent CBN rate data and paid plans unlocking extended historical archives and higher API call volumes. The API uses key-based authentication and returns JSON responses with the official CBN rate for the requested date and currency pair. Nigerian accounting software vendors, tax technology companies, and enterprise ERP integrators are the primary target users for this compliance-oriented exchange rate API.
Education, Payments, Utility Tools
Nigerian VTU platform with comprehensive service coverage including airtime, data, bill payments, and exam pins. Vtunaija provides good customer support and developer-friendly APIs. Serves multiple needs beyond standard VTU including exam registration pin sales for JAMB, WAEC, and other educational institutions.
Blockchain, Payments
African crypto savings and investment platform with staking, savings products, and payment integrations. Bundle focuses on consumer-friendly crypto investment with some merchant and partner API capabilities. Enables users to save and invest in crypto with automated features and payment integration.
Banking & Fintech, Payments, Trading & Currency Exchange
Official central bank statistics database providing exchange rates, banking statistics, monetary aggregates, balance of payments, and financial data. Access to Nigeria's macro-economic indicators for research, analysis, and applications.
Utility Tools, Payments
Simple REST API for Nigerian airtime and data top-up services. MobileVTU provides straightforward integration for developers looking for lightweight VTU capabilities. Focused on simplicity and ease of use with clear REST endpoints. Supports all major Nigerian telecom networks for quick integration.
Communications, Trading & Currency Exchange
Siteti is a Nigerian-built WhatsApp CRM and SMS messaging platform designed specifically for the challenges facing Nigerian businesses managing customer communications. Unlike global enterprise WhatsApp platforms that are complex and expensive, Siteti is built with Nigerian SMEs in mind — offering an affordable, easy-to-use customer messaging platform with WhatsApp Business integration, SMS capabilities, shared team inbox, broadcast messaging, and chatbot automation, all priced in Nigerian naira. The core problem Siteti solves is the reality that millions of Nigerian businesses manage customer relationships primarily through WhatsApp — but WhatsApp was designed for personal messaging, not business customer service. A typical Nigerian small business owner receives hundreds of customer messages per day on WhatsApp, has to respond personally to each one, loses track of conversations, and cannot delegate responses to staff without sharing their personal phone. Siteti resolves this by connecting WhatsApp Business API to a shared team inbox where multiple agents can see all incoming messages, claim conversations, respond from a shared account, and coordinate without messages falling through the cracks. The shared team inbox is the most impactful feature for Nigerian businesses. It works like a customer support ticket system built on top of WhatsApp — when a customer sends a WhatsApp message to the business number, it appears in the Siteti inbox visible to all team members. An agent claims the conversation, responds, and the conversation is tracked to resolution. This enables Nigerian businesses to handle high volumes of customer inquiries through WhatsApp without the chaos of a single person managing a shared phone. WhatsApp broadcast messaging allows Nigerian businesses to send the same message to a large list of opted-in WhatsApp contacts simultaneously. Unlike WhatsApp's personal broadcast (which is limited to 256 contacts who have saved your number), Siteti's broadcast feature works through WhatsApp Business API with proper opt-in management and higher volume limits. Nigerian businesses use this for product announcements, promotional campaigns, event invitations, and service updates — reaching customers on WhatsApp, which has dramatically higher open rates than email or SMS. The no-code chatbot builder enables Nigerian business owners to create automated WhatsApp response flows without programming knowledge. Common use cases include answering frequently asked questions automatically (store hours, pricing, delivery areas), collecting customer information before routing to a human agent, guiding customers through a product catalog with menu-driven navigation, and sending instant acknowledgment messages outside business hours. This automation reduces manual workload for Nigerian SME owners who often double as customer service agents. SMS integration complements WhatsApp by allowing businesses to send SMS notifications to customers who are not on WhatsApp or in situations where WhatsApp delivery is not appropriate. Combined SMS and WhatsApp capability from a single platform simplifies Nigerian business communication management. The contact management system allows businesses to organize their customer contacts, add custom attributes (purchase history, location, preferences), tag customers for segmented campaigns, and maintain a complete history of all communications with each contact. This creates a lightweight CRM layer on top of WhatsApp that Nigerian businesses previously lacked. The API enables developers to integrate Siteti's WhatsApp and SMS capabilities into custom Nigerian applications — e-commerce platforms, order management systems, delivery tracking apps — so that programmatic messages from the application flow through Siteti and are tracked alongside manually sent messages in the same customer inbox. Pricing in NGN eliminates the forex burden for Nigerian businesses and makes Siteti more accessible to SMEs operating with naira budgets. The free plan allows Nigerian businesses to start using the platform immediately and upgrade as their usage grows. For Nigerian developers building communication features into applications, Siteti's API provides a local alternative to global WhatsApp Business Solution Providers with locally relevant pricing and support.
Banking & Fintech, Development Tools, Payments
VTpass is a dedicated Value Added Services (VAS) platform providing a unified API for developers to natively integrate utility bill payments and digital services directly into their applications. The VTpass API enables automated airtime vending (MTN, Airtel, Glo, 9mobile), data subscription bundles, electricity bill payments across Nigerian DisCos, cable TV subscription renewals (DStv, GOtv, Startimes), and other utility services. Nigerian fintech apps, mobile money platforms, and business solutions use VTpass to offer comprehensive utility payment services without building separate integrations for each provider.
Banking & Fintech, Payments
Partna is a Nigerian-founded fintech platform providing stablecoin payments and B2B payment infrastructure across Africa. The Partna API enables stablecoin transactions, fiat on/off-ramps, and B2B transfers. Nigerian businesses and fintech platforms use Partna for cross-border payments, B2B settlement, and stablecoin-based transactions with minimal friction.
Payments, Utility Tools
Nigerian VTU platform specializing in cheap data packages alongside airtime, cable TV, and utilities. DataVTU is popular among Nigerian developers and resellers for competitive data pricing. Provides API access for airtime recharge, data bundles, cable subscriptions, and bill payments across all major networks and providers.
Payments, Utility Tools
Nigerian VTU (Virtual Top-Up) platform providing airtime, cheap data, cable subscriptions, and bill payments API. VTU.ng is very popular among Nigerian developers and resellers for its excellent rates, simple integration, and strong API. Supports all major telecom networks (MTN, Airtel, Glo, 9mobile) and cable providers.
Blockchain, Trading & Currency Exchange
Alpaca is a US-regulated broker-dealer that provides commission-free trading APIs for both US stocks and cryptocurrencies through a unified REST and WebSocket interface. Alpaca's business model is built around empowering fintech developers and algorithmic traders with brokerage infrastructure — meaning the API is first-class and well-maintained, not a secondary feature of a retail trading platform. Alpaca is a popular choice for US-based developers building trading applications, robo-advisors, and algorithmic trading bots that require a regulated brokerage API. Nigerian developers and users should be clearly aware that Alpaca restricts account registration to the United States and a limited number of other eligible countries. Nigeria is not currently on Alpaca's list of supported countries, so Nigerian residents cannot open live trading accounts or fund accounts to trade real assets. This API entry is documented for completeness and for Nigerian developers who may be building applications for US markets, or who want to use Alpaca's paper trading environment for strategy development and testing purposes. For US-eligible developers, Alpaca's crypto trading API provides access to 25+ cryptocurrency pairs including BTC/USD, ETH/USD, SOL/USD, and other major assets. Commission-free trading means no per-trade fees eat into returns — particularly valuable for algorithmic trading strategies with many small orders. Alpaca routes crypto trades through multiple liquidity providers to seek best execution, and there is no minimum account balance requirement to start trading crypto. The paper trading environment is a critical differentiator: Alpaca provides a complete simulation environment that uses real market data but executes simulated trades with virtual money. The paper trading API is accessible to any developer who creates an Alpaca account — even developers from countries like Nigeria who cannot trade real assets can create a paper trading account for testing and development purposes. This makes Alpaca's paper trading useful for Nigerian developers validating trading strategy logic before deploying to a live exchange. The REST API for crypto covers order placement (market, limit, stop, and bracket orders), open order management, order history, position tracking, and account balance queries. The data API returns real-time and historical OHLCV price data for all supported crypto pairs, with multiple bar resolutions (1 minute, 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day). WebSocket streams deliver real-time quote updates, trade events, and account-level order fill notifications. The unified nature of Alpaca's API — covering both US stocks and crypto with the same authentication, endpoint patterns, and WebSocket infrastructure — is a significant advantage for multi-asset application developers. A portfolio management app can manage US equity and crypto positions simultaneously through one API integration, with consistent data formats and authentication. Alpaca also provides a Broker API for platforms that want to offer trading capabilities to their own users — enabling fintech companies to build brokerage products on top of Alpaca's regulatory infrastructure. For US-based Nigerian-diaspora fintech founders building US financial products, the Broker API provides a path to offering both stock and crypto trading to US customers without applying for their own broker-dealer license. Paper trading remains the primary relevant use case for Nigerian developers — the free simulation environment with real market data is genuinely valuable for testing algorithmic trading systems, and the API structure is identical to production, meaning Nigerian developers can build and test complete trading bot implementations against real Alpaca infrastructure before considering production deployment in eligible markets.
eCommerce, Payments
Tendar is a Nigerian BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) and lending platform providing APIs for e-commerce integration and installment management. The Tendar API enables merchants to offer BNPL checkout, manage installment plans, handle debt recovery, and embed flexible payment options directly into platforms. Nigerian e-commerce sites, marketplaces, and merchants use Tendar API to increase conversion by offering customers installment payment options.
Utility Tools, Payments
Global VTU and mobile top-up API providing airtime and data recharge services across 130+ countries including Nigeria. Reloadly is excellent for international coverage with strong developer experience. Single API enables reaching customers across multiple countries and networks. Supports both global and Nigeria-specific mobile operators.
Banking & Fintech, Payments
Business banking API for SMEs providing account management, payments, and financial services. Brass enables businesses to manage accounts, make transfers, and integrate banking features directly into their platforms. Designed specifically for SME needs with developer-friendly APIs.
Banking & Fintech, Development Tools, Payments
Providus Bank is a fintech-friendly commercial bank providing Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) APIs enabling fintech platforms to offer banking services. The Providus Bank API provides endpoints for transfers, virtual account creation, balance inquiries, statement retrieval, and webhook notifications. Nigerian fintech platforms, payment companies, and digital banks use Providus Bank APIs to enable core banking functionality, virtual account services, and fund management without building banking infrastructure.
Payments, Development Tools
Flutterwave is one of Africa's most widely used payment infrastructure companies, providing a comprehensive API that enables businesses to accept payments locally across Africa and internationally in 150+ countries. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in San Francisco with major operations in Lagos, Flutterwave powers payments for over 1.3 million businesses across Africa. The platform is CBN-licensed, PCI DSS Level 1 certified, and handles billions of dollars in transactions annually. What the API Does The Flutterwave API provides a unified payment layer covering: card payments (Verve, Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Discover); bank transfer checkout (USSD and direct NIP); mobile money (M-Pesa, MTN MoMo, Airtel Money, and more); virtual accounts for NGN collections; recurring billing and subscription management; split payments for marketplace revenue sharing; bulk transfers for mass payouts; multi-currency settlement in NGN, USD, GBP, EUR, and more; and payment links for no-code collections. How Developers Use It Developers sign up at flutterwave.com, obtain API keys from the Developer section of the dashboard, and integrate using the documentation at developer.flutterwave.com. Authentication uses Bearer token — secret key placed as "Authorization: Bearer sk_test_..." in request headers. Test mode keys only work in the test environment. SDKs are available for JavaScript, React, React Native, Flutter, Python, PHP, Node.js, and more. Inline checkout and redirect checkout are both supported. Webhooks deliver real-time transaction events to developer endpoints. Pricing Local transactions (cards, bank transfer, USSD, POS, Visa QR): 2% per transaction, broken down as 1.4% transaction fee + 0.6% platform fee. International cards (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Discover): 4.8% per transaction. Transfer fees: ₦10 for transfers up to ₦5,000; ₦25 for ₦5,001 to ₦50,000; ₦50 for transfers above ₦50,000. All fees are subject to 7.5% VAT. No monthly fee — only pay when you transact. By default, customers bear transaction charges but this can be adjusted in the dashboard. Authentication Bearer token using the secret key from your Flutterwave dashboard. Format: "Authorization: Bearer sk_test_{KEY}" for test, "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_{KEY}" for live. Never expose secret keys client-side. Rate Limits Flutterwave enforces rate limits and returns HTTP 429 (Too Many Requests) when exceeded. Specific thresholds are documented at developer.flutterwave.com/v3.0/docs/rate-limit. Compliance CBN-licensed, PCI DSS Level 1 certified. Flutterwave is registered with multiple African central banks and financial regulatory authorities. NDPR-compliant for Nigerian data protection. Challenges and Gotchas (1) The 0.6% platform fee on top of the 1.4% transaction fee makes the effective local rate 2% — ensure pricing models account for both components. (2) 7.5% VAT applies to all fees, not just the base rate. (3) International card chargeback risk requires careful implementation of refund and dispute handling. (4) Flutterwave has faced some regulatory challenges historically — stay current on their operational status. (5) Webhook endpoint verification (signature check) is mandatory in production. Company Background Flutterwave was founded by Olugbenga Agboola (GB) and co-founders in 2016. The company has raised over $500M in funding and is valued at over $3 billion, making it one of Africa's most valuable fintech companies. It operates in 34+ African countries and has processed over $26 billion in transactions. FAQs Q: What is the fee for local card payments in Nigeria? A: 2% per transaction (1.4% + 0.6% platform fee), subject to 7.5% VAT. No cap publicly published — verify on the pricing page. Q: Does Flutterwave support USSD payments? A: Yes. USSD is supported at the same 2% local rate. Q: Does Flutterwave support M-Pesa in Kenya? A: Yes. M-Pesa is supported for Kenya and other East African markets. Q: Is there a sandbox? A: Yes. Use test mode API keys (sk_test_...) for sandbox testing. Q: What is the transfer fee? A: ₦10 for transfers ≤₦5,000; ₦25 for ₦5,001–₦50,000; ₦50 for transfers above ₦50,000. All subject to VAT.
Payments
Payment API gateway for Nigerian merchants and developers. Xpress Payment provides payment processing, collections, and settlement services. Enables businesses to integrate payment capabilities into their platforms.
Payments, Development Tools
Unlimit (formerly known as CardPay, then Unlimint) is a global financial technology company with over 15 years of experience in international payment infrastructure. Headquartered across multiple regional offices and operating in 200+ locations worldwide, Unlimit provides payment processing, multi-currency business accounts, Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), and cryptocurrency on/off-ramp services to merchants, platforms, and financial institutions globally. Africa — specifically Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania — is explicitly listed as a supported region in Unlimit's global coverage. The company has undergone a notable branding evolution: originally known as CardPay, it rebranded to Unlimint, and subsequently to Unlimit (the current brand). Its core payment processing technology remains under the CardPay API specification (version 2.70), which continues to be used by integrators and is documented at integration.unlimit.com. The legacy GitHub repositories can be found under the "cardpay" organization on GitHub, reflecting the original brand. **Core Products** 1. **Payment Gateway** — Unlimit's flagship product: accepting card payments, local payment methods, and alternative payment methods (APMs) from customers in 200+ locations. The gateway supports over 1,000 payment methods — an exceptionally broad catalog that includes regional methods specific to Africa, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and India. For Nigerian merchants, this means access to local Nigerian payment methods alongside international Visa, Mastercard, and Amex cards. The gateway supports both Payment Page Mode (where customers enter card details on Unlimit's hosted checkout page) and Gateway Mode (server-to-server, where the merchant's own application handles card data collection under PCI DSS compliance). 2. **Unlimit Accounts** — Multi-currency business accounts that allow businesses to hold, send, and receive funds in 30+ currencies. These accounts come with integrated card issuance for business spending and are accessible programmatically via API. For Nigerian businesses operating internationally, this provides a way to maintain USD, EUR, and GBP balances without going through traditional Nigerian commercial bank FX channels. 3. **Banking as a Service (BaaS)** — A white-label financial infrastructure layer that enables fintechs and non-bank businesses to offer card issuing, payment processing, and banking features under their own brand. The BaaS offering connects to SEPA (Euro transfers), SWIFT (international transfers), and BACS (UK transfers) payment rails. 4. **Unlimit Crypto** — An on/off-ramp service for crypto-native platforms: DeFi protocols, GameFi platforms, NFT marketplaces, and crypto exchanges can accept fiat currency from users and pay out in cryptocurrency (or vice versa) using Unlimit's crypto conversion infrastructure. **API Architecture & Authentication** The Unlimit (CardPay) API uses terminal-based credentials for authentication. Each merchant is assigned a Terminal Code and Password, which are used to generate SHA-512 HMAC signatures for request authentication — providing tamper-evident server-to-server authentication. OAuth 2.0 is used for certain API flows. The API has two primary modes: Payment Page Mode uses redirect-based flows, while Gateway Mode enables direct card processing on the merchant's own checkout page (requiring PCI DSS certification). The API is documented at integration.unlimit.com and legacy references appear on integration.unlimint.com (which redirects). **Sandbox Environment** Unlimit provides a sandbox environment for integration testing. Developers can simulate payments, test 3D Secure flows, and validate webhook integrations without processing real transactions. Sandbox credentials are separate from production credentials. **3D Secure & Fraud Prevention** Unlimit supports 3D Secure (3DS1 and 3DS2) for card authentication. In 3DS2 flows, Unlimit can collect additional customer authentication data either from the merchant's side or through an intermediate authentication page. This reduces chargebacks and strengthens payment security — particularly important for high-risk verticals like gaming, travel, and international e-commerce. **Recurring & Subscription Billing** Unlimit's gateway supports recurring payment schedules, making it suitable for subscription businesses that need to charge customers on weekly, monthly, or annual cycles without requiring manual card entry for each period. **Africa & Nigeria-Specific Context** Nigeria is one of three African markets explicitly listed in Unlimit's geographic coverage (alongside Kenya and Tanzania). For Nigerian merchants, this means Unlimit supports local Nigerian payment methods in addition to international cards. However, Unlimit is not a Nigerian-native payment provider — it is a global gateway that supports Nigeria as part of its multi-regional infrastructure. Businesses primarily serving the Nigerian domestic market may find Nigerian-native gateways (Paystack, Flutterwave) more deeply integrated with local payment methods and better suited to local developer support. Unlimit's strongest value proposition for Nigerian-connected businesses is multi-currency acceptance and serving international customer bases that include Nigeria. **Pricing** Unlimit does not publicly list pricing. Commercial terms are negotiated on a per-merchant basis depending on transaction volume, payment methods, geographic coverage, and vertical (gaming, travel, e-commerce, etc.). Merchants must contact Unlimit's sales team for pricing. This is typical for enterprise-grade global payment gateways. **Compliance & Licensing** Unlimit operates under financial services licenses in multiple jurisdictions. The company implements KYC and AML processes for merchant onboarding. Specific license details for Nigerian operations are not publicly disclosed — Unlimit operates as an international payment processor interfacing with Nigerian payment infrastructure rather than holding a direct CBN license. **Frequently Asked Questions** Q: Is Unlimit the same as CardPay? A: Yes. Unlimit was previously known as CardPay, then rebranded to Unlimint, and now operates as Unlimit. The core API documentation remains under the CardPay/CardPay API versioning. Q: Does Unlimit support Nigerian payment methods? A: Nigeria is explicitly listed as a supported market. Unlimit supports local Nigerian payment methods alongside international cards. Q: What is the difference between Payment Page Mode and Gateway Mode? A: Payment Page Mode redirects customers to Unlimit's hosted checkout for card entry. Gateway Mode processes card data directly on the merchant's site (requires PCI DSS compliance). Q: Is self-serve onboarding available? A: No. Merchant onboarding requires contacting Unlimit sales for custom pricing and a commercial agreement. Q: Does Unlimit support crypto payments? A: Yes. Unlimit Crypto provides on/off-ramp services enabling fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat conversions for DeFi, GameFi, and NFT platforms.
Payments
Kora (formerly Korapay) is a CBN-licensed pan-African payment infrastructure company offering a unified API for payment acceptance, payouts, identity verification, and exchange rates across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. The company rebranded from Korapay to Kora to signal its evolution from a single-market payment gateway to a multi-country API platform. Kora serves Nigerian and pan-African fintechs, marketplaces, and enterprises with a developer-first API design. What the API Does The Kora API provides: card payment acceptance (local and international); bank transfer checkout; mobile money payments across Africa; payouts to Nigerian and other African bank accounts; identity verification (BVN, NIN, vNIN, CAC, and multi-country KYC); a real-time exchange rate API; and webhook notifications for all transaction events. The API base URL is api.korapay.com/merchant. How Developers Use It Developers sign up at korahq.com, complete business verification, and obtain API keys from their Kora dashboard. Authentication uses Bearer tokens — the secret key is passed as "Authorization: Bearer {SECRET_KEY}" in request headers. Test mode uses separate test keys; live mode requires dashboard activation. Sandbox testing is available with specific test cards and bank account numbers. The full API reference is at developers.korapay.com and docs.korapay.com (OpenAPI spec available at developers.korapay.com/llms.txt). Pricing Not publicly listed. Per-verification costs for identity services are deducted directly from the Kora account balance. Payment processing fees require contacting Kora directly. Sandbox/test mode is free. Rate Limits Not publicly documented — contact Kora support for limits before high-volume integrations. Compliance CBN-licensed in Nigeria. Multi-country presence with appropriate regulatory relationships in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. Encryption and security-grade protocols for all identity verification calls. Challenges and Gotchas (1) Identity service activation is separate from standard payment access — must be enabled in dashboard. (2) No public rate card — pricing requires direct engagement. (3) Rate limits not documented. (4) Two documentation sites exist (developers.korapay.com and docs.korapay.com) — both are maintained but can cause confusion. (5) Recurring billing not currently supported. Company Background Kora was founded in Nigeria and has grown into a multi-country payment infrastructure provider. The company raised a Series A round and is backed by African and global investors. The rebrand from Korapay to Kora reflected the platform's expansion beyond Nigeria to serve pan-African payment flows. FAQs Q: Is Kora the same as Korapay? A: Yes. Korapay rebranded to Kora to reflect its multi-country expansion. Q: Does Kora support mobile money across Africa? A: Yes. Mobile money payments are supported across multiple African markets. Q: Is there a sandbox? A: Yes. Use test keys and the provided test card/bank account numbers to simulate payments. Q: Does Kora have an exchange rate API? A: Yes. A real-time exchange rate API is included in the Kora API suite. Kora's identity verification capabilities — BVN validation, NIN verification, CAC business registration lookup, bank account name resolution — allow platforms to perform KYC checks within the same API integration used for payments. For Nigerian fintechs with regulatory KYC obligations, combining payment processing and identity verification in a single provider relationship reduces integration complexity and the vendor management overhead of maintaining separate payment and KYC provider relationships. Multi-country coverage from Kora extends payment collection and disbursement capabilities to Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa through a single API, with exchange rate data available for FX conversion between these markets. Nigerian platforms expanding to other African markets, or pan-African platforms that include Nigeria as a market, can use Kora to cover multiple African payment contexts without establishing separate provider relationships in each country. Kora's API documentation and developer experience orientation reflect the company's positioning for developer-led product discovery — Nigerian developers can sign up, explore the sandbox, and begin integration without enterprise sales engagement. The availability of test environment credentials, comprehensive API reference documentation, and code examples reduces the time from developer discovery to working integration, which is meaningful for Nigerian startups moving quickly to market.
Blockchain, Payments
Bitquery is a blockchain data platform that provides unified GraphQL APIs for querying historical and real-time data across more than 40 blockchain networks including Ethereum, Bitcoin, BNB Chain, Solana, Polygon, Tron, and many others. By exposing blockchain data through GraphQL — rather than raw RPC calls or proprietary REST endpoints — Bitquery enables developers to compose precise, efficient queries that return exactly the data they need without over-fetching. For Nigerian developers building blockchain analytics tools, trading platforms, compliance systems, and DeFi applications, Bitquery provides the data infrastructure to power sophisticated multi-chain analysis. Nigeria's blockchain ecosystem spans multiple chains: Nigerian DeFi users trade on Ethereum and BSC, Nigerian NFT creators mint on Polygon and Solana, and Nigerian stablecoin users hold USDT on Tron. Any comprehensive blockchain analytics tool for Nigerian users must cover multiple chains. Bitquery's unified GraphQL schema means Nigerian developers write queries in the same format regardless of which chain they are targeting — only the network parameter changes. DEX (Decentralized Exchange) trade data is one of Bitquery's strongest capabilities. The platform indexes trades from hundreds of DEXes across all supported chains — Uniswap, PancakeSwap, SushiSwap, Raydium, and more. Nigerian trading analytics platforms can query real-time and historical DEX trades by token pair, trader address, DEX protocol, or time range. The ability to compare prices across DEXes simultaneously enables arbitrage detection, best-execution analysis, and market making intelligence. Token analytics queries return holder counts, top holders by balance, token transfer volumes, and holder distribution analysis. For Nigerian token projects or investment research, understanding the distribution of a token's supply — is it concentrated in a few whale wallets or broadly distributed? — is critical information available through Bitquery's token holders endpoint. Money flow analysis tracks how funds move between addresses across the blockchain. This is a powerful tool for both investment research (tracing smart money flows) and compliance (AML, following suspicious funds). Nigerian blockchain compliance companies and crypto businesses subject to VASP regulations can use Bitquery's flow analysis to build transaction monitoring workflows. Real-time data streaming is available via WebSocket subscriptions, enabling Nigerian applications to react to on-chain events as they happen — new DEX trades, new token mints, large transfers, and contract interactions. This is the data foundation for real-time trading alerts, liquidation monitoring systems, and live protocol dashboards. Mempool data (unconfirmed transactions) is available for Bitcoin and Ethereum, enabling Nigerian applications to monitor pending transactions before confirmation — useful for detecting large incoming transfers, front-running detection in trading systems, and transaction fee optimization. The free tier provides 10,000 API points per month — each query consumes points based on the amount of data retrieved. For a Nigerian developer building a prototype or low-traffic tool, the free tier is sufficient to demonstrate functionality. The Basic plan at $99/month provides 1 million points, and the Business plan at $249/month provides 5 million points. All queries are executed via the Bitquery GraphQL IDE (ide.bitquery.io) or programmatically via any GraphQL client — REST wrappers, Apollo Client, and URQL all work.
Payments, Development Tools
Cross-border payment and remittance API for African businesses. Afriex enables payouts, collections, payment links, and customer management across multiple African corridors including Nigeria. Provides single unified API for international transfers to and from Africa with competitive rates and fast settlement.
Payments, Security
ErcasPay is a CBN PSSP-licensed, PCI DSS-certified, and NDPA-compliant multicurrency payment gateway built specifically for Nigerian businesses. The platform supports 8 currencies — NGN, USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, GHS, GMD, and KES — enabling Nigerian merchants to accept both local and international payments through a single API integration. ErcasPay processes transactions from 5,000+ businesses and has offices in Lagos, Abuja, and Ibadan. What the API Does The ErcasPay REST API enables developers to: initiate and process local card payments (Verve, Visa, Mastercard), bank transfers, USSD, and QR code payments; accept international card payments in 7 foreign currencies; issue and manage virtual account numbers for NGN collections; generate payment links; and create invoices. The API uses separate sandbox and live environments with distinct base URLs. How Developers Use It Developers create an account at ercaspay.com, obtain API keys from the dashboard under developer settings, and integrate using the documentation at docs.ercaspay.com. Authentication uses Bearer tokens with secret keys prefixed ECRS-TEST-SK (sandbox) and ECRS-LIVE-SK (live). Sandbox base URL: api-staging.ercaspay.com/api/v1. Live base URL: api.ercaspay.com/api/v1. All requests require Accept: application/json and Content-Type: application/json headers. Pricing Local transactions (cards, bank transfer, QR, USSD): 1.4% per transaction, capped at ₦2,000. International card transactions: 4.8% per transaction. International payments first settle to a USD wallet; conversion to NGN is triggered from there. A 10% rolling reserve is applied on international card transactions, held for 180 days — refundable if no chargebacks occur. No monthly subscription fee. Authentication Bearer token authentication. Secret key placed in the Authorization header as "Bearer {SECRET_KEY}". Separate keys for test and live modes. Keys managed from the ErcasPay Dashboard. Compliance CBN PSSP-licensed, PCI DSS certified, and compliant with the Nigeria Data Protection Act (NDPA). Multi-location presence in Lagos, Abuja, and Ibadan. Challenges and Gotchas (1) 10% rolling reserve on international card transactions held 180 days can be a significant cash flow constraint for new merchants. (2) International payments do not settle directly in NGN — they go to a USD wallet first. (3) No recurring billing or split payment support currently. (4) Rate limits not publicly documented — confirm with ErcasPay before high-volume implementations. Company Background ErcasPay is operated by ErcasPay Nigeria Limited, headquartered in Lagos with offices in Abuja and Ibadan. The company targets Nigerian businesses of all sizes needing a reliable, multi-currency alternative payment gateway. FAQs Q: What is the fee for local card payments? A: 1.4% capped at ₦2,000 per transaction. Q: Does ErcasPay support USSD payments? A: Yes. USSD is supported at the same 1.4% (capped ₦2,000) local rate. Q: What currencies can I accept through ErcasPay? A: NGN, USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, GHS, GMD, and KES — 8 currencies total. Q: Is there a sandbox? A: Yes. Sandbox at api-staging.ercaspay.com/api/v1 using ECRS-TEST-SK keys. Q: What is the rolling reserve? A: A 10% hold on international card transaction amounts, retained for 180 days. It is refunded in full if no chargebacks are filed during that period. ErcasPay's multi-currency acceptance — NGN plus USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, and additional international currencies — enables Nigerian merchants to accept payments from both domestic customers paying in naira and international customers paying in their home currency. This dual-currency capability in a single gateway integration eliminates the need for separate domestic and international payment gateway relationships, reducing integration complexity and ongoing vendor management for Nigerian businesses serving both local and global customer segments. PCI DSS certification at ErcasPay ensures that card data handling meets international security standards, protecting Nigerian merchants from the liability and reputational risk of card data breaches. For Nigerian SMEs that lack the resources to implement independent PCI compliance infrastructure, using a certified gateway like ErcasPay allows them to accept card payments within a compliant infrastructure environment without bearing the cost and complexity of independent certification.
Booking, Trading & Currency Exchange
EBANX is a Brazil-founded cross-border payments platform, with roughly 11 years in the market, that helps global brands accept and settle payments in emerging markets. It provides pay-in (accepting local payment methods), payouts, FX conversion, and card tokenization infrastructure, giving merchants a single integration to reach shoppers across more than 20 countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia rather than negotiating separately with dozens of local acquirers and banks. The platform's Direct API lets merchants build custom checkout experiences with control over payment logic, subscriptions, retries, and tokenization, while alternative integration options (Payment Page, Payment Link, and a Payout API) suit merchants who want a faster, lower-code path. EBANX advertises support for 200+ local payment methods globally, including region-specific options like PIX and Boleto in Brazil, UPI in India, and OXXO in Mexico, alongside digital wallets, instant payments, mobile money, and vouchers. In Nigeria specifically, EBANX's country-specific documentation confirms support for Bank Transfer and the OPay wallet (both handled as "trusted redirect" payment flows), credit/debit cards, and USSD as a cash-alternative method that works without an internet connection. All Nigerian transactions are processed in Nigerian Naira (NGN), and EBANX's pitch to merchants is the ability to "sell to Nigerians in Naira while accepting the most popular local payment methods" and receive settled funds in USD elsewhere. Beyond standard pay-in, EBANX also offers a High Order Value / B2B product for automated processing of invoices between roughly $10,000 and $100,000, aimed at cross-border B2B transactions in emerging markets without relying on traditional SWIFT transfers, plus recurring billing with local payment methods and automated retry logic for failed subscription charges. EBANX is used by over 500 merchants, including large international brands such as Microsoft, Canva, Sony, Ubisoft, Booking.com, Spotify, and Uber, positioning it as infrastructure for global companies expanding into markets like Nigeria rather than a self-serve local payment gateway built primarily for Nigerian startups.
Blockchain, Trading & Currency Exchange
Exchangerate.host is a free and freemium currency exchange rates API providing real-time and historical FX data for over 170 currencies including the Nigerian Naira, backed by multiple financial data sources and offering exceptional coverage breadth that spans traditional fiat currencies, precious metals, and cryptocurrency prices in a single unified API service. The API is particularly well regarded in the developer community for its generous free tier, which historically offered unlimited requests without rate limits. For Nigerian developers building applications with high currency conversion volumes — such as fintech platforms, e-commerce stores serving both local and international customers, or analytics dashboards showing FX trends — the ability to access live rates without per-query costs represents significant economic value, especially during the prototype and early growth phases where revenue is not yet sufficient to justify paid data subscriptions. The real-time rates endpoint fetches the latest exchange rates for all supported currencies relative to a specified base currency. Rates are updated multiple times daily from the aggregated financial market data providers that power the service. Nigerian applications displaying live Naira exchange rates against USD, EUR, GBP, and other currencies can rely on Exchangerate.host for current rate data that accurately reflects prevailing market conditions. Historical data access extends back years, enabling trend analysis and retrospective financial calculations. For Nigerian businesses reconciling multi-currency accounts, calculating the historical Naira value of foreign currency assets and transactions, or analyzing how the Naira has performed against trading partner currencies during specific economic periods, historical rate lookups are an essential feature. The API supports specifying any past date to retrieve the exchange rates that were in effect on that day. Cryptocurrency rate coverage sets Exchangerate.host apart from traditional fiat-only currency APIs. The API includes prices for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and hundreds of other cryptocurrencies converted to fiat currencies, enabling developers to display crypto-to-Naira conversions or integrate crypto pricing into the same FX data layer used for traditional currencies. For Nigerian fintech applications serving both traditional banking customers and crypto-aware users, consolidating fiat and crypto rates through a single API simplifies integration significantly. Precious metals prices are included alongside fiat and crypto rates. Gold, silver, platinum, and palladium prices are expressed in terms of currency units per troy ounce, enabling applications to display commodity prices alongside currency rates. For Nigerian investors tracking gold prices as an inflation hedge or investment tool, having gold prices available through the same API used for FX data is a convenient consolidation. Currency conversion is supported through a dedicated convert endpoint accepting source currency, target currency, and amount. This endpoint handles the calculation server-side, returning the converted amount and the rate applied. For applications that only need the conversion result rather than the underlying rate data, this endpoint minimizes response parsing complexity. Nigerian e-commerce platforms serving both the domestic market and the Nigerian diaspora in the UK, US, and Europe can use Exchangerate.host to display accurate Naira pricing to local customers while showing equivalent foreign currency prices to international visitors. Real-time rates ensure pricing remains accurate as the Naira exchange rate fluctuates, protecting businesses from pricing mismatches caused by stale rates. The API authenticates through an API key for the paid plans. The JSON response format is consistent and clearly documented with example requests available for all major programming languages. Paid plans unlock higher rate update frequencies, more historical data, and premium support, providing a clear upgrade path as applications grow from prototype to production scale.
eCommerce, Development Tools, Payments
Saleor is an open source, API-first headless e-commerce platform that exposes all commerce functionality through a GraphQL API. Unlike traditional e-commerce platforms that bundle a frontend and backend together, Saleor separates the commerce engine (API) from the presentation layer — enabling developers to build custom storefronts with any technology while the API handles all the complex commerce logic: products, inventory, pricing, discounts, orders, customers, payments, and fulfillment. The GraphQL API provides a typed, self-documenting interface to all commerce operations. Products and their variants (by size, color, or other attributes) are fully managed through the API, along with structured product metadata, category hierarchies, collection groupings, and media management. The inventory system tracks stock levels across multiple warehouses and automatically handles stock reservation during checkout. Order management through the API covers the full order lifecycle — from cart creation and checkout through payment capture, fulfillment assignment, shipping, and returns. The order events system provides a complete audit trail of every state change in an order, which is important for compliance and customer service in Nigerian e-commerce operations. The payment system is gateway-agnostic and plugin-based, allowing integration with any payment provider through a standard interface. For Nigerian e-commerce platforms, this means integrating Paystack, Flutterwave, or other Nigerian payment gateways through Saleor's payment plugin system — maintaining a unified order and payment record regardless of the payment provider used. Multi-channel commerce support enables a single Saleor instance to serve multiple sales channels (website, mobile app, marketplace) with different pricing, availability, and currency settings per channel. This is valuable for Nigerian retailers operating both domestic and export channels, or serving different customer segments with different pricing structures. For Nigerian technology companies building custom e-commerce solutions for clients — rather than deploying off-the-shelf platforms — Saleor provides a production-ready commerce API foundation that eliminates months of custom backend development. The MIT open source license means there are no licensing costs for self-hosted deployments, making it commercially viable for agencies building for Nigerian clients. Nigerian marketplaces and multi-vendor platforms can leverage Saleor's vendor management capabilities to manage multiple seller catalogs, configure commission structures, and route orders to the appropriate fulfillment party — all through the GraphQL API. Saleor Cloud offers a managed hosting option for teams that prefer not to run their own infrastructure, with a free development tier suitable for prototyping and a paid tier for production deployments. The self-hosted option via Docker is fully supported and provides complete control over the infrastructure. Saleor's storefront starter templates and SDKs for React, Next.js, and other frameworks accelerate the frontend development that sits on top of the GraphQL API. Nigerian agencies building custom e-commerce storefronts for clients can start from battle-tested starter code rather than building from scratch, focusing customization effort on the brand-specific design and functionality rather than boilerplate commerce logic. The permission system in Saleor uses fine-grained permissions for dashboard and API access — allowing Nigerian e-commerce operators to give warehouse staff access to order fulfillment features without exposing product pricing or customer data. This role-based access is important for Nigerian businesses with diverse staff roles accessing the same platform. Saleor's channel system supports multi-currency commerce natively, enabling Nigerian e-commerce businesses selling internationally to manage NGN pricing for domestic customers and USD or GBP pricing for export and diaspora markets through a single backend — with automatic currency-appropriate display based on the customer's channel.
Banking & Fintech, Trading & Currency Exchange
NGX Market Data API v3 is the official real-time and historical market data API from the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGXGroup). The API provides live stock prices, market indices (NSE Index), trading volumes, bid-ask spreads, and historical OHLCV (Open, High, Low, Close, Volume) data for all listed securities on the NSE. Nigerian fintech developers, investment platforms, and trading applications use the NGX Market Data API to build real-time stock tickers, portfolio trackers, market analysis dashboards, and trading applications with official NSE data.
Development Tools, eCommerce, Payments
VelvPay is a Nigerian payment gateway built specifically for local businesses, freelancers, SMEs, and startups that need an affordable, easy-to-integrate payment solution without the complexity or pricing overhead of larger platforms. Positioned as "a rising star" in Nigeria's fintech ecosystem, VelvPay differentiates itself through transparent flat-rate pricing, same-day settlement, built-in invoicing tools, and a local-first approach to customer support that understands the specific needs of Nigerian merchants. **What VelvPay Does** VelvPay provides a multi-channel payment acceptance platform that covers web checkout, mobile app payments, and in-person transactions. At its core, the platform allows Nigerian businesses to accept card payments (Visa, Mastercard, Verve) and bank transfers from customers, with settlement directly to the merchant's Nigerian bank account. The platform is accessible both through a developer API for technical integrations and through a merchant dashboard with no-code tools for non-technical users. **Pricing — 1% Local Transactions** VelvPay charges 1% per local NGN transaction — one of the more competitive rates in the Nigerian payment gateway market. There are no hidden charges on top of this fee. For international transactions, VelvPay applies a flexible fee structure (specific rates are provided during merchant onboarding). No publicly advertised monthly subscription fee is required, making it a low-risk choice for businesses with variable or seasonal transaction volumes. For context, this 1% flat fee compares favorably to other Nigerian gateways that charge 1.5%–2.5% per transaction — a meaningful cost difference at scale, particularly for businesses processing high volumes of low-to-mid-value transactions. **Same-Day Settlement** VelvPay offers same-day settlement, which means payments collected on a given business day are available in the merchant's bank account on the same day (subject to cut-off times). This is a significant advantage for cash-flow-sensitive small businesses and freelancers who cannot afford to wait 1–3 days for funds to clear. **Invoicing Tools** Unlike most payment gateways that focus purely on API integrations, VelvPay includes built-in invoicing tools in the merchant dashboard. Businesses can create professional invoices with a payment link embedded directly — the client clicks "Pay Now" and completes the payment via card or bank transfer. This makes VelvPay accessible to freelancers, consultants, and service businesses that don't have a website or e-commerce store. **API & Developer Tools** VelvPay provides a REST API for developers who need to integrate payment acceptance into websites, mobile apps, or backend systems. API keys are issued after completing merchant onboarding. The API follows standard patterns with JSON request/response formats and webhook notifications for payment lifecycle events (payment initiated, payment successful, payment failed). Documentation is available through the VelvPay developer portal. **Multi-channel Payment Acceptance** VelvPay supports three primary payment channels: - **Web checkout**: A hosted payment page or embeddable checkout widget for websites and web apps - **Mobile**: SDK/API integration for iOS and Android mobile applications - **In-person**: Payment acceptance at physical locations for retail, market vendors, and hospitality businesses **Nigeria Focus & Support** VelvPay is built exclusively for the Nigerian market. Customer support is local and understands the operational reality of Nigerian businesses — from intermittent banking system downtimes to the preferences of Nigerian consumers for specific payment methods. This localization is a meaningful advantage for businesses that find the support teams of international platforms less responsive to Nigeria-specific issues. **Compliance** VelvPay operates within Nigeria's CBN regulatory framework for payment service providers. Merchant onboarding includes standard Nigerian KYC requirements (CAC registration, director ID, business bank account) to comply with CBN anti-money laundering directives. **Challenges & Limitations** VelvPay is smaller than market leaders Paystack and Flutterwave, which means its ecosystem of plugins, third-party integrations, and developer community resources is less extensive. Recurring/subscription billing and bulk payout APIs are not documented as current product features. USSD payments and split payment capabilities are also absent. For businesses that need deep payment infrastructure (marketplace payment splitting, cross-border payouts, card issuance), a larger platform may be more appropriate. However, for straightforward payment collection and invoicing in Nigeria, VelvPay's simplicity and pricing are competitive advantages. **Frequently Asked Questions** Q: What is the transaction fee on VelvPay? A: 1% per local NGN transaction with no hidden charges. International transaction fees are flexible — contact VelvPay for current rates. Q: Does VelvPay offer same-day settlement? A: Yes. Payments collected are typically settled to the merchant's bank account the same business day. Q: Do I need a CAC-registered business to use VelvPay? A: A CAC registration is required for production merchant access. Test/sandbox credentials can be obtained for development testing before completing KYC. Q: Does VelvPay support recurring billing? A: Recurring/subscription billing is not a documented current feature — use Paystack or SPay if you need automated recurring charges. Q: Is VelvPay available outside Nigeria? A: VelvPay is designed for the Nigerian market. Non-Nigerian businesses should explore international gateway options.
Development Tools, Payments
JuheAPI Dark Watermark API provides programmatic image watermarking capabilities, specializing in invisible and dark watermarks that embed ownership information into digital assets without visibly defacing the image. Unlike traditional visible watermarks that overlay logos or text on images, dark watermarking embeds ownership data in the image's pixel structure in a way that is imperceptible to the human eye but detectable by specialized software. The technology uses steganographic techniques to encode a creator identifier, timestamp, or custom payload within the frequency domain of the image data. When an image is suspected of unauthorized use, the dark watermark can be extracted and decoded to prove original ownership. This creates a digital provenance trail that is much harder to remove than visible watermarks, since removing it would require significantly degrading image quality. Visible dark watermark options (a lighter variant in the product line) add a subtle, semi-transparent mark to images that is noticeable to trained eyes but doesn't disrupt the primary visual experience of the image. This middle-ground approach is useful for watermarking preview images — images shown at reduced quality to potential buyers — where the watermark deters casual theft without completely obscuring the content that buyers need to evaluate. The API accepts standard image formats (JPEG, PNG, WebP) and returns watermarked versions with minimal quality loss. Batch processing support allows platforms with large image libraries to watermark multiple assets in a single API call, reducing integration overhead for bulk operations. The JSON response includes the processed image as a URL or base64-encoded data, along with metadata about the watermark that was embedded. For Nigerian photographers, media companies, stock photo platforms, and digital artists, the JuheAPI Dark Watermark API addresses a critical need: protecting creative work from unauthorized reproduction. Nigerian photographers who sell images online frequently face unauthorized use of their work — having an invisible ownership marker embedded in every image provides legal recourse and proof of ownership. Nigerian stock photo platforms can watermark preview images to deter theft while allowing legitimate buyers to download clean versions after payment. The extraction and verification process for dark watermarks requires matching software that can decode the embedded payload from a suspected unauthorized copy of the image. JuheAPI provides the companion verification endpoint — submitting a suspected copy of an image returns whether a watermark is detected and what ownership payload it decodes to. This creates a complete ownership claim workflow: embed the watermark, distribute the image, detect unauthorized copies, verify ownership with the extraction endpoint. For Nigerian legal contexts, digital watermark evidence has been used in intellectual property disputes to establish original ownership of photographs and artwork. Nigerian photographers who have had their images used without permission in advertisements or websites can use watermark extraction as documented evidence of their ownership in cease-and-desist communications or legal proceedings. The extractable payload typically contains a unique identifier that maps to a creator record in the developer's database, providing proof of provenance even if the image filename and EXIF metadata have been stripped. The JuheAPI platform provides a unified account and billing system across all their API products. Nigerian developers who use multiple JuheAPI services — including Web Summary and Dark Watermark — manage all API keys, usage quotas, and billing from a single dashboard. This consolidation simplifies vendor management and reduces the overhead of maintaining separate accounts and payment methods for each API service.
Identity & KYC, Payments
Fincra Identity is the identity management and verification feature set built into the Fincra API. It is not a standalone product — it is accessed using the same API credentials as Fincra payment services. Nigerian developers using Fincra for payments get identity verification capabilities included, enabling them to build compliant KYC flows without integrating a separate identity provider. What It Does Fincra Identity provides three core capabilities: (1) BVN Resolution — resolve a Nigerian Bank Verification Number to retrieve the associated identity details, enabling KYC verification against the CBN BVN database; (2) Bank Account Verification — verify that a Nigerian bank account number is valid and retrieve the account holder name via NIP lookup, preventing failed transfers before they happen; (3) Card BIN Resolution — look up a card BIN (Bank Identification Number) to identify the issuing bank, card network, card type, and country of origin for any card number prefix. How Developers Use It Fincra Identity endpoints are called using the same API key obtained from the Fincra Dashboard. Documentation is at docs.fincra.com under the Identity Management section. The same 50 req/sec rate limit applies. Sandbox and live environments are fully isolated as with all Fincra services. Pricing Included in the Fincra API subscription. Custom pricing based on volume — contact Fincra sales for current rates. Rate Limits 50 API calls per second, shared with all other Fincra API calls. HTTP 429 returned when exceeded. What Fincra Identity Does NOT Cover Unlike dedicated KYC providers such as Dojah, Smile Identity, or YouVerify, Fincra Identity does not provide: NIN verification, international passport verification, driver's licence lookup, liveness detection, document capture, or CAC business verification. For comprehensive KYC with selfie matching and multi-document support, a dedicated KYC provider is recommended. Challenges and Gotchas (1) Fincra Identity is only available to businesses that have an active Fincra account — you cannot use it without being a Fincra payments customer. (2) Feature set is narrower than dedicated KYC providers. (3) Live mode requires completing full Fincra compliance onboarding first. (4) No standalone pricing — bundled with Fincra payment costs. Company Background Fincra is a CBN PSSP-licensed payment gateway incorporated in the US (Fincra Inc.) and operating in Nigeria and across Africa. The company provides payment infrastructure to African businesses and fintechs, and includes identity verification as part of its end-to-end compliance toolkit. FAQs Q: Is Fincra Identity a separate product from Fincra payments? A: No. It is a feature set within the Fincra API accessed with the same credentials. Q: Can I use Fincra Identity without using Fincra for payments? A: Not independently — you need an active Fincra business account to access these endpoints. Q: Does Fincra Identity support NIN verification? A: Not currently. BVN resolution, bank account verification, and card BIN lookup are the currently documented identity features. Q: What is the rate limit? A: 50 requests per second, shared with all Fincra API calls. Fincra Identity's bank account verification feature resolves the account holder name associated with a provided Nigerian bank account number and bank sort code, confirming that the account belongs to the expected recipient before initiating a disbursement. This pre-disbursement verification step prevents both accidental wrong-account transfers (from typographical errors in account numbers) and deliberate fraud (where a bad actor substitutes their account number for a legitimate recipient). For Nigerian platforms processing large volumes of payouts — salary disbursements, vendor payments, refund processing — the operational cost savings from preventing failed and misdirected transfers justifies the verification step. Card BIN lookup from Fincra Identity allows platforms to identify the issuing bank, card type (debit/credit), card scheme (Visa/Mastercard/Verve), and country of origin from the first six digits of a card number before the transaction is processed. This BIN intelligence enables routing decisions — selecting the optimal payment processor for a card type, applying different processing flows for international versus domestic cards, flagging potentially high-risk card origins — that improve authorization rates and fraud management before authorization is even attempted.
Development Tools, Payments, Banking & Fintech
Duplo is an API-first financial operating system for African businesses, providing a unified platform for B2B payments, expense management, virtual accounts, FX transfers, and NRS-compliant e-invoicing. Headquartered in Victoria Island, Lagos, Duplo is CBN PSSP-licensed, PCI DSS certified, ISO 27001 and 22301 certified, and NDPR-compliant. In early 2026, Duplo became one of the first Nigerian companies to secure dual NRS (Nigerian Revenue Service) licences for e-invoicing — a critical milestone as Nigeria moves toward mandatory digital invoicing for tax compliance. What the API Does The Duplo API enables businesses to: issue and manage virtual bank accounts; initiate bulk payments to up to 500 recipients simultaneously; process local and international card payments; perform FX conversions in 80+ currencies across 160+ countries; automate expense approval workflows with budget controls; perform auto-reconciliation of transactions; and generate NRS-compliant e-invoices. The platform is designed as both a business tool and an embeddable API layer for fintechs and platforms. How Developers Use It Developers access documentation at developers.tryduplo.com. Authentication uses API keys with clear environment prefixes: dp_test_ for test mode, dp_live_ for live mode. The API is REST-based with JSON payloads over HTTPS. All API calls must be made over HTTPS. Developers must complete compliance requirements before being granted live mode access. A sandbox environment is available for full testing. Pricing Local card transactions: 1.5% capped at approximately ₦1,200–₦1,300. International card transactions: 3.8%–4.0%. Custom volume tiers available for high-volume international processing. Contact Duplo for enterprise pricing. Authentication API keys are managed via the Duplo Dashboard. Test mode uses dp_test_ prefixed keys; live mode uses dp_live_ prefixed keys. Never share live keys publicly. Compliance CBN PSSP-licensed, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, ISO 22301, NDPR-compliant, and NRS dual-licensed for e-invoicing. Duplo is also expanding into South Africa via a partnership with Ozow for instant EFT payments. Challenges and Gotchas (1) Live mode requires completing compliance requirements — not instant. (2) Rate limits not publicly documented. (3) The NRS e-invoicing feature is relatively new and developers should check docs for current implementation status. (4) Duplo is B2B focused — not designed for high-volume consumer checkout flows. (5) International card fees (3.8–4%) are higher than local card fees. Company Background Duplo was founded in Nigeria by Yele Oyekola and Damola Ajao and is backed by prominent African and global VCs. The company is focused on solving the complexity of B2B financial operations in Africa, where businesses often manage payments through manual bank transfers, spreadsheets, and fragmented tools. Duplo consolidates this into a single API-first platform. FAQs Q: Does Duplo support bulk payments? A: Yes. Duplo supports bulk payments to up to 500 recipients in a single API call. Q: What is the fee for local card payments? A: 1.5% capped at approximately ₦1,200–₦1,300 per transaction. Q: Is there a sandbox? A: Yes. Test mode is available using dp_test_ API keys from your dashboard. Q: Does Duplo support e-invoicing for Nigerian tax compliance? A: Yes. Duplo holds NRS dual licences for NRS-compliant e-invoicing — one of the first Nigerian companies to do so. Q: Can Duplo handle international payments? A: Yes. Duplo supports 80+ currencies across 160+ countries with international card acceptance at 3.8–4.0%. Duplo's NRS-compliant e-invoicing capability supports Nigerian businesses' obligations under the Federal Inland Revenue Service's e-invoicing requirements, allowing platforms to generate and submit compliant electronic invoices as part of the B2B payment workflow rather than as a separate process.
Blockchain, Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
African cryptocurrency on/off-ramp platform with strong peer-to-peer (P2P) focus and merchant payment APIs. Yellow Card specializes in fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat conversions across Africa with excellent user experience. Provides merchant and API integrations for businesses wanting to accept and process cryptocurrencies across African markets.
Payments, Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Multi-currency payment API for cross-border transfers and international payments. Eversend provides APIs for money transfers, bill payments, and financial services across multiple African countries. Enables seamless multi-currency transactions with competitive rates.
Blockchain, Development Tools, Payments
Thirdweb is a comprehensive Web3 development platform that provides the tools, infrastructure, and SDKs needed to build blockchain-powered applications — from wallet creation and smart contract deployment to NFT marketplaces, token launches, and backend transaction management. Unlike platforms that focus on a single aspect of Web3 development, Thirdweb covers the entire application stack: frontend wallet connection, smart contract deployment and interaction, backend wallet management, and payments. For Nigerian developers looking to build Web3 applications without needing years of blockchain expertise, Thirdweb dramatically lowers the barrier to entry. Nigeria's Web3 developer community is among the most active in Africa, with thousands of developers building NFT projects, DeFi tools, blockchain games, and tokenized platforms. The biggest challenge for Nigerian Web3 developers is not understanding the concepts — it is the steep learning curve of smart contract development, the complexity of wallet management, and the infrastructure required to support production dApps. Thirdweb abstracts all of this complexity into well-documented SDKs and APIs that work with familiar frameworks like React and Node.js. Embedded Wallets are Thirdweb's flagship feature for consumer applications. Instead of requiring users to have MetaMask or another browser wallet, Embedded Wallets create a Web3 wallet for any user who logs in with email, Google, Apple, or social accounts. The private key is secured in a distributed key management system and is recoverable via the same authentication method. For Nigerian consumer apps — e-commerce platforms with NFT loyalty rewards, games with on-chain items, content platforms with creator tokens — Embedded Wallets make Web3 accessible to users with no prior crypto experience. Smart contract deployment through Thirdweb's dashboard or SDK covers the most common contract types: ERC-20 tokens, ERC-721 NFT collections, ERC-1155 multi-edition tokens, Marketplace contracts (buy/sell/auction NFTs), Staking contracts, and more. These are audited, pre-built contracts that can be deployed in minutes from the dashboard — no Solidity knowledge required. For Nigerian project teams that want to launch an NFT collection or issue a utility token quickly, this eliminates weeks of smart contract development and security auditing. Account Abstraction (ERC-4337) support allows Nigerian developers to build gasless transaction flows where the application sponsors gas fees on behalf of users. This is transformative for user onboarding: a Nigerian user can interact with a blockchain application without ever buying cryptocurrency for gas fees. The application developer sponsors the gas, and users experience smooth, familiar web interactions rather than confusing wallet popups. Thirdweb Engine is a self-hosted or managed backend server that manages wallets and transactions at scale. For Nigerian applications that need to send thousands of transactions per day — airdropping tokens to users, minting NFTs on purchase, updating on-chain scores — Engine provides a reliable, queued transaction system with nonce management, retry logic, and webhook notifications. It eliminates the complex backend infrastructure that would otherwise be required for high-volume on-chain operations. The platform supports over 1,000 EVM chains, including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Base, and many others. Nigerian developers can build once and deploy to any chain without changing their application code. SDKs are available for TypeScript/JavaScript (React, React Native, Node.js), Python, Go, and Unity/Unreal for game development. The free tier is generous: 1,000 monthly active wallets and full access to smart contract tools, making it suitable for Nigerian projects in early stages and hackathons without any upfront cost.
Payments, Utility Tools
Modern, developer-friendly Nigerian VTU platform providing airtime, cheap data packages, and bill payment APIs. Pairgate combines modern API design with competitive pricing. Designed with developers in mind, offering straightforward integration for airtime, data bundles, cable subscriptions, and utility payments across all Nigerian networks.
Payments, Development Tools
SPay Business Solutions Ltd is a Nigerian payment technology company offering a streamlined payment gateway designed specifically for Nigerian businesses, SMEs, freelancers, and service providers who need to accept online payments without complex infrastructure. Operating under the tagline "Payment Simplified!", SPay focuses on making payment collection accessible to businesses of all sizes — from solo freelancers generating payment links to online stores integrating a full checkout API. **What SPay Does** SPay provides a payment processing platform with four core capabilities: online payment acceptance, virtual account creation, payment link generation, and subscription/recurring billing management. These services are accessible via a RESTful API documented through readme.io, as well as via the SPay merchant dashboard for non-technical users who need payment links without coding. **Payment Acceptance API** SPay's payment API allows merchants to initiate payment sessions, redirect customers to a hosted payment page or embed a checkout widget, and receive payment confirmation via webhooks. The API handles both card payments and bank transfer acceptance, giving merchants multiple collection channels in a single integration. Standard REST API conventions are followed, with responses in JSON format and test payment tools provided for developer integration testing. **Virtual Accounts via First Bank of Nigeria** One of SPay's distinguishing features is its integration with First Bank of Nigeria for virtual account issuance. Merchants can programmatically create unique Nigerian bank account numbers (virtual accounts) that are tied to a specific customer or transaction. When a customer makes a bank transfer to the virtual account, SPay detects the payment in real time and notifies the merchant via webhook — enabling seamless bank transfer payment collection without manual reconciliation. This is particularly valuable for Nigerian consumers who prefer bank transfers over card payments. **Payment Links** SPay allows merchants to generate shareable payment links from the dashboard or via API — links that customers can open in a browser to complete a payment. This makes SPay accessible to businesses without a website, allowing freelancers, event organizers, and service businesses to collect payments via WhatsApp, email, or social media with zero code required. **Subscription & Recurring Billing** For SaaS products, membership platforms, schools, and subscription boxes, SPay offers a recurring billing module that handles automated charge schedules on weekly, monthly, or annual cycles. Merchants set up subscription plans, customers authorize the recurring payment, and SPay manages the billing cycle, retry logic for failed payments, and subscription lifecycle events. **Authentication** SPay uses API key-based authentication. Merchants receive API credentials (public key and secret key) after completing the merchant onboarding and KYC process on the SPay dashboard. API keys are passed in request headers for all API calls. Test mode credentials are provided separately and can be used to test integrations without processing real transactions. **Merchant Onboarding & KYC** To go live on SPay, merchants must complete a KYC process that includes providing business registration details (CAC certificate), bank account information for settlement, and identity verification for directors. This is standard practice for all Nigerian payment gateways operating under CBN regulatory requirements. Developers and businesses can test the API with test credentials before completing KYC — making it easy to build and validate integrations before going live. **Sandbox / Test Environment** SPay provides test payment capabilities for developers to simulate transactions and validate integrations without real money movement. The documentation on readme.io includes response codes and test scenarios. **Pricing** SPay uses a commission-based pricing model — merchants pay a percentage of each transaction processed. Specific fee percentages are not publicly listed on the website; merchants receive a pricing schedule upon completing merchant onboarding. No publicly advertised monthly subscription fee has been found. **Nigeria Context & Regulatory Standing** SPay is a Nigeria-focused payment company serving Nigerian merchants under CBN payment regulations. Banking partner arrangements, including the First Bank virtual account integration, operate within Nigeria's licensed payment infrastructure. SPay is suitable for Nigerian businesses that want a simpler, more focused payment solution compared to the complexity of larger platforms like Paystack or Flutterwave — particularly for businesses that primarily need virtual accounts and payment links rather than a full payments ecosystem. **Challenges for Nigerian Developers** SPay is a smaller gateway with fewer integrations and ecosystem tools compared to market leaders like Paystack or Flutterwave. The public documentation, while functional, is not as comprehensive or community-supported as larger platforms. Bulk payout/transfer capabilities, USSD payments, and POS integration are not available in the current product offering. International card acceptance (non-NGN) is also not documented as a supported feature. **Frequently Asked Questions** Q: Does SPay support USSD payments? A: No. SPay currently supports card payments and bank transfers via virtual accounts — not USSD. Q: Can I use SPay without a registered business (CAC)? A: A CAC-registered business is required for production access. Developers can test with sandbox credentials before completing KYC. Q: How are virtual accounts created through SPay? A: Virtual accounts are issued in partnership with First Bank of Nigeria via the SPay API — each account receives a unique Nigerian bank account number that customers can transfer to. Q: Does SPay support international payments? A: SPay is primarily focused on NGN payments for Nigerian customers. International card acceptance is not a documented feature. Q: Is there a recurring billing feature? A: Yes — SPay includes a subscription management module for automated recurring billing on daily, weekly, monthly, or annual schedules.
eCommerce, Payments
Dodo Payments is a specialized Merchant of Record (MoR) platform built specifically for African SaaS, software, and online startups scaling globally. Unlike traditional payment gateways, Dodo Payments functions as the legal merchant of record, collecting international card payments from global customers, managing automated payout workflows, and completely handling global tax calculation and remittance obligations. This allows African software vendors and SaaS platforms to accept international payments and scale without the complex compliance and tax burden. Nigerian SaaS companies, software startups, and digital product creators use Dodo Payments to access international payment processing while Dodo handles all global tax and compliance responsibilities.
Identity & KYC, Development Tools, Payments
Persona is a flexible identity verification and compliance platform that enables businesses to build custom KYC (Know Your Customer) workflows combining government ID verification, biometric liveness checks, database lookups, phone/email verification, and AML screening — all configurable through a no-code workflow builder without requiring engineering changes for each compliance update. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, Persona serves fintech companies, crypto exchanges, marketplaces, lending platforms, and gig economy businesses globally. The platform is notable for its native Nigeria Database Verification module, which checks Nigerian NIN (National Identification Number), BVN (Bank Verification Number), voter registration cards, and driver's licenses directly against authoritative Nigerian government databases — a capability that distinguishes Persona from most global KYC providers who rely on document OCR alone without database cross-referencing. ## What the API Does Persona's API enables developers to trigger, manage, and retrieve identity verifications called "Inquiries." Each Inquiry runs a configurable set of verification steps: document verification (passport, national ID, driver's license), selfie liveness detection (passive or active), database checks (government, watchlist, phone, email), and business verification (KYB). For Nigerian users specifically, the Nigeria Database Verification product cross-references the user's submitted identity data against Nigerian government records, providing a higher-assurance confirmation than document image analysis alone. The platform's Workflow engine (formerly called "Cases") allows teams to define multi-step verification journeys with conditional logic. For example: if a user submits a voter card that fails OCR, automatically prompt for an alternative document; if a database check returns a sanctions hit, escalate to manual review; if transaction value exceeds a threshold, trigger enhanced due diligence. These rules are configured in Persona's dashboard without code. ## How Developers Use It Integration follows a standard flow: 1. Create an Inquiry using `POST /api/v1/inquiries` — this initializes a verification session for the end user. 2. Redirect the user to Persona's hosted verification flow (URL returned in the response) or embed using the Persona Embedded Flow SDK. 3. The user completes document upload, selfie, and any database check steps within the Persona-hosted UI. 4. Receive results via webhook (`inquiry.completed`, `inquiry.failed`, etc.) when the user finishes, or poll `GET /api/v1/inquiries/{inquiry-id}` for status. 5. Retrieve the full verification report including extracted data, check outcomes, and overall decision from the Inquiry object. Persona also provides a Verifications API for accessing individual check results (document verification report, database check report, selfie report) with granular pass/fail scores and extracted data fields. ## Pricing & Fees Persona uses a pay-per-successful-verification model — you are only charged when a verification completes successfully, not for failed or abandoned sessions. Plans include: - **Essential Plan**: $250/month (annual contract) — includes 500 verifications per month, $1 per additional verification. - **Growth Plan**: Custom pricing based on your verification volume and product mix. Recommended for most growing businesses. - **Enterprise Plan**: Fully custom pricing with dedicated support, SLA guarantees, and volume discounts. A sandbox environment is available immediately after signup for testing. ## Authentication Persona uses API key authentication. Your API key is passed as a Bearer token in the `Authorization: Bearer your_api_key` header on all requests. Persona API keys have environment scopes — sandbox keys work only against the sandbox environment, and live keys are used in production. Webhook payloads include an `X-Persona-Signature` header for payload verification to prevent forgery. ## Rate Limits Persona does not publish specific rate limits in their public documentation. Limits vary by plan tier. Contact Persona's support team to confirm the applicable rate limits for your subscription. ## Nigeria-Specific Capabilities Persona's Nigeria Database Verification is a standout feature for Nigerian developers. It covers: - **NIN Verification**: Cross-check NIN (National Identification Number) against NIMC database records. - **BVN Verification**: Verify the Bank Verification Number against NIBSS records. - **Voter Card Check**: Validate voter registration data against INEC records. - **Driver's License Check**: Verify driver's license data against FRSC records. This level of native database integration means Nigerian fintechs can achieve higher-confidence identity verification than document OCR alone, satisfying CBN's customer due diligence requirements for higher-tier accounts. ## Compliance & Regulations Persona holds ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certifications. The platform supports GDPR, CCPA, and NDPR compliance. Verification workflows align with FATF KYC recommendations and CBN Customer Due Diligence regulations for Nigerian financial institutions. AML screening covers OFAC, UN, EU, UK Treasury, and global PEP databases. For Nigerian fintech clients, Persona's database verification checks provide evidence-based identity confirmation suitable for CBN KYC Tier 2 and Tier 3 requirements. ## Challenges & Gotchas for Nigerian Developers 1. **Nigeria database checks as add-on**: While Persona supports Nigerian database verification, it may be priced as an add-on module on top of the base plan. Confirm availability on your chosen plan. 2. **Essential plan volume limits**: 500 verifications/month on the Essential plan is modest. Growing Nigerian apps with significant onboarding volumes will need to move to Growth pricing quickly. 3. **USD billing only**: Persona charges in USD. Use a USD virtual card or wire transfer for payment. 4. **NDPR biometric data**: Selfie and biometric data captured during Persona verifications qualify as sensitive personal data under NDPR. Ensure your data processing agreement covers Nigerian user biometric data retention and deletion. 5. **Workflow complexity**: Persona's no-code Workflow builder is powerful but has a learning curve. Budget time for workflow configuration and QA testing before going live. ## Company Background Persona was founded in 2018 by Rick Song and Charles Yeh. The company has raised over $200 million in funding from investors including Index Ventures, Coatue, and First Round Capital. Persona is widely used by US and international fintech companies, and its Nigeria support makes it one of the few global KYC platforms with genuine database-level verification for Nigerian identity documents. ## Frequently Asked Questions **Q: Does Persona support Nigerian BVN verification?** A: Yes. Persona's Nigeria Database Verification product supports BVN cross-checking against NIBSS records, NIN against NIMC, voter cards against INEC, and driver's licenses against FRSC. **Q: Can I use Persona without a sales call?** A: Yes. The Essential plan ($250/month) activates after online signup. Growth and Enterprise plans require a sales conversation. **Q: Am I charged for failed verifications?** A: No. Persona only charges for successfully completed verifications — abandoned or failed sessions are not billed. **Q: Is there a free trial?** A: Persona provides a sandbox environment for testing without charge. Production verifications require an active plan.
Blockchain, Development Tools, Payments
Alchemy is a blockchain developer platform providing managed node infrastructure, enhanced blockchain APIs, and developer tools for building Web3 applications on Ethereum and other major blockchains. Founded in 2017 and backed by leading Silicon Valley investors, Alchemy powers some of the most prominent DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces, and Web3 applications globally. For Nigerian blockchain developers, Alchemy is a top-tier choice for node infrastructure with a generous free tier, comprehensive multi-chain support, and developer tools that significantly reduce the complexity of building production-grade blockchain applications. The core of Alchemy is managed blockchain node access. Rather than running and maintaining their own Ethereum or Polygon nodes (which requires significant server infrastructure, ongoing maintenance, and expertise in blockchain node operation), developers connect to Alchemy's distributed node network via API endpoints. Alchemy's infrastructure handles node synchronization, client diversity, load balancing, and uptime — providing Nigerian developers with institutional-grade blockchain connectivity from day one without infrastructure investment. Multi-chain support covers Ethereum mainnet and testnets (Sepolia, Goerli), Polygon (MATIC), Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Solana, and other chains. This breadth is essential for Nigerian Web3 developers building cross-chain applications or choosing low-fee chains like Polygon for users sensitive to Ethereum gas costs. Nigerian users are particularly gas-cost-conscious, making L2 chains like Polygon and Arbitrum critical for applications targeting Nigerian Web3 users, and Alchemy supports all of these through the same developer account. Enhanced APIs are what differentiate Alchemy from simple node providers. The NFT API provides pre-indexed NFT data — fetching all NFTs owned by an address, NFT metadata, collection floor prices, and transfer history — without requiring developers to build custom indexing infrastructure. The Token API returns ERC-20 token balances, metadata, and price data for any wallet address. The Transfers API provides historical transaction history for an address across all asset types. These enhanced endpoints replace weeks of custom indexing work with simple API calls, dramatically reducing development time for Nigerian blockchain developers. Alchemy Notify provides webhook-based real-time notifications for blockchain events — address activity alerts, dropped transactions, mined transaction confirmations, and gas price alerts. Instead of polling the blockchain every block to check for activity, Nigerian applications subscribe to Alchemy Notify webhooks and receive POST requests when specified events occur. This is critical for fintech and payment applications that need to react immediately when transactions confirm. The Alchemy SDK (JavaScript/TypeScript and Python) wraps the standard JSON-RPC interface with a typed, developer-friendly API and automatically handles retry logic, rate limiting, and authentication. Nigerian developers can call the same ethers.js or web3.js methods they already know, with Alchemy SDK as a drop-in enhancement that adds reliability and the enhanced API endpoints. Free tier provides 300 million compute units per month — a generous allowance that covers typical development workloads and low-to-medium traffic production applications. There are no hard rate limits on the free tier (unlike many competitors that throttle requests per second), which makes Alchemy suitable for Nigerian developers building applications that may have bursty traffic patterns. Paid plans at $49/month and above provide higher compute unit allowances and enhanced support. For Nigerian Web3 developers, Alchemy is the standard starting point for Ethereum and EVM chain development. The combination of reliable node infrastructure, enhanced data APIs, real-time webhooks, and a generous free tier makes it the most developer-friendly and feature-complete option in the managed node provider space.
Blockchain, Trading & Currency Exchange
Popular global cryptocurrency exchange with strong presence across Africa including Nigeria. Luno provides trading APIs, market data endpoints, and wallet integrations for developers. Good for applications needing crypto trading capabilities and market data integration. Supports both beginner and advanced traders.
Payments
Payoneer is a global financial services company headquartered in New York that specializes in cross-border payments and mass payouts. Founded in 2005, Payoneer serves 5 million+ businesses and freelancers in 190+ countries, and is particularly popular in emerging markets including Nigeria, where it is widely used by freelancers, remote workers, and digital service providers to receive international payments from global clients on platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and direct business clients. Payoneer is fully operational in Nigeria. Nigerian users can create Payoneer accounts, receive payments in USD, EUR, GBP, and other currencies, and withdraw directly to a Nigerian bank account in NGN. This makes Payoneer one of the most accessible international payment receipt platforms for Nigerian professionals. The Mass Payout API extends this capability to platforms — enabling businesses to disburse earnings to thousands of Payoneer account holders globally, including Nigeria, through a programmatic API. The Payoneer Mass Payout API v4 is RESTful with JSON payloads. Authentication uses OAuth 2.0 with Client ID and Client Secret, following the standard Client Credentials grant. API documentation is at developer.payoneer.com. The API enables platforms to: register new payees programmatically (white-label onboarding), check payee status and approval, initiate mass payouts to multiple payees in a single batch call, query payment status, and retrieve transaction history. The white-label registration flow is powerful for marketplace operators. Rather than requiring payees (freelancers, sellers, service providers) to manually create Payoneer accounts on Payoneer's website, the platform can embed a customized registration flow within their own UI — Payoneer handles the KYC verification in the background. This creates a seamless onboarding experience where users feel they're interacting with the platform's native payment system. Mass Payout batches allow platforms to submit hundreds or thousands of payment instructions simultaneously, specifying the Payoneer account ID and amount for each recipient. Payoneer processes these in batch and notifies the platform via webhooks on each payment's status (pending, processing, completed, failed). Pricing for Payoneer Mass Payout API is transaction-based. The fee structure depends on the payment type (Payoneer-to-Payoneer vs. Payoneer-to-bank), currency, and payout corridor. Payoneer-to-Payoneer transfers are typically free or very low cost. Bank withdrawals to Nigerian accounts incur conversion fees from the original currency (usually USD) to NGN. Exact rates are provided during the platform onboarding process and are negotiable for high-volume partners. From a compliance standpoint, Payoneer is registered with the US FinCEN as a Money Services Business and holds e-money licenses in the EU, UK, Japan, Australia, and other jurisdictions. For Nigeria, Payoneer operates under the CBN's guidelines for international remittance. The company went public on NASDAQ in 2021. Frequently Asked Questions: Can Nigerian individuals receive money on Payoneer? Yes — individual Nigerian professionals can create a free Payoneer account and receive USD, EUR, or GBP payments from international clients, then withdraw to a Nigerian bank. Can I build a platform that pays Nigerian sellers via Payoneer? Yes — use the Payoneer Mass Payout API with the white-label payee registration flow to onboard Nigerian sellers and disburse earnings to their Payoneer accounts (which they can then withdraw locally). Does Payoneer support NGN collections (receiving payments from Nigerian customers)? Primarily no — Payoneer is focused on paying OUT to recipients globally. For collecting NGN from Nigerian customers, use a local Nigerian gateway like Paystack or Monnify.
Payments, Banking & Fintech
Klasha is a fintech platform providing global checkout solutions for African merchants enabling cross-border e-commerce payments. The Klasha API enables merchants to accept international payments, manage currency conversion, and simplify cross-border transactions. Nigerian e-commerce businesses and merchants use Klasha to expand internationally and accept payments from global customers.
Payments, Development Tools
Monnify is a Nigerian payment gateway and payment infrastructure provider operated by Moniepoint Inc, a CBN-licensed payment solutions company and one of Nigeria's largest agent banking networks. Originally launched as a standalone product by TeamApt, Monnify was rebranded under the Moniepoint brand as the company expanded. Monnify provides Nigerian businesses with APIs for accepting payments via local debit cards, bank transfers, USSD, and direct debit, as well as disbursing funds to bank accounts across all Nigerian banks. The Monnify API is RESTful and uses JSON for all request and response payloads. Developers can authenticate using Basic Auth — by encoding the API key and secret key as a base64 string — or by exchanging credentials for an OAuth Bearer Token via the /auth/login endpoint. Most implementations prefer Bearer Token authentication for production use, obtaining a token at server startup and refreshing as needed. The Monnify dashboard is available at app.monnify.com and provides API credentials, transaction history, settlement reports, and webhook configuration. Payment collection works by initializing a transaction with a unique reference and an amount, then displaying the payment modal to the customer. The Monnify SDK handles the checkout experience, allowing customers to choose between card, bank transfer, USSD, or direct debit. For bank transfers, Monnify generates a reserved virtual account number for the customer — they transfer any amount to that account and the payment is automatically matched and settled to the merchant. This is particularly powerful for recurring or subscription-like payment flows. In terms of pricing, Monnify charges 1.5% per transaction for local card payments, USSD payments, and bank transfers, with a cap of ₦2,000 per transaction. An alternative flat fee of ₦500 may apply for certain bank transfer transactions. International card payments attract a 4% fee. Cash collection is also charged at 4%. There are no setup fees and no monthly platform fees. Payouts (disbursements to Nigerian bank accounts) are charged at flat rates: ₦10 for transfers below ₦10,000, ₦20 for transfers between ₦10,000 and ₦49,999, and ₦40 for transfers of ₦50,000 and above. All fees are exclusive of VAT. A key differentiator for Monnify is its settlement speed. Transactions are settled to merchants same-day by 10pm, and businesses can trigger up to 3 on-demand express settlements per day outside the standard settlement window. This is important for Nigerian e-commerce and service businesses that need immediate access to collected revenue. The Monnify sandbox environment is a full replica of the production environment. Developers can create a free sandbox account at developers.monnify.com without any business registration documents. The sandbox provides test card numbers, simulated bank transfer flows, and test USSD responses. Moving from sandbox to live requires completing the standard CBN KYC process, including submitting CAC documents, director BVN, and business bank account details. Rate limits for the Monnify API are not publicly published. However, for high-volume integration partners, Monnify support can provide guidance on expected throughput limits. The Webhook system sends real-time notifications for transaction completion, refunds, and disbursements — developers must validate the webhook hash to confirm the event originated from Monnify, and must respond with HTTP 200 within a defined timeout. From a compliance standpoint, Monnify is CBN-licensed and operates under the same regulatory framework as all Nigerian payment service providers. Moniepoint Inc holds a Payment Service Bank license and a Switching and Processing license from the CBN. Monnify is also PCI-DSS certified, which is required for handling card payment data in Nigeria. Merchants are not required to be PCI-DSS certified themselves, as card data is processed on Monnify servers rather than the merchant's infrastructure. The BVN verification endpoint available through Monnify allows developers to verify a customer's Bank Verification Number — returned with name, date of birth, and phone number — which is a CBN requirement for KYC compliance in lending and financial services. Common challenges Nigerian developers face with Monnify include webhook delivery delays during peak traffic (Black Friday, end-of-month), and the need to handle cases where bank transfer payments arrive outside the transaction expiry window. Developers should set generous expiry windows for bank transfer transactions, and use the transaction status query endpoint to confirm payment before fulfilling orders, rather than relying solely on webhook delivery. Moniepoint Inc, the parent company, is headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria and has expanded operations across several African markets. It was voted the fastest-growing company in Africa by the Financial Times in 2023 and has raised over $100 million in funding. Notable investors include QED Investors, Lightrock, and Google. The Monnify gateway is used by thousands of Nigerian businesses including e-commerce platforms, SaaS companies, and lending products. Frequently Asked Questions: Can I use Monnify without CAC registration? You can test the API freely on the sandbox with just an email. However, to go live and receive real settlements, full CBN KYC including CAC registration is required. Does Monnify support NGN only? Yes, Monnify primarily settles in Nigerian Naira (NGN). International card transactions are charged at 4% but are settled in NGN after currency conversion. Does Monnify have a no-code payment link? Yes, Monnify supports payment links and invoice generation from the dashboard — no coding required. What happens if my webhook fails? Monnify retries failed webhook deliveries. However, developers should use the transaction status API (/api/v1/merchant/transactions/query) as a fallback to confirm payment independently.
Blockchain, Payments, Development Tools
Chainstack is a production-grade blockchain infrastructure provider delivering managed RPC nodes, archive data access, real-time streaming, and dedicated node infrastructure across 70+ blockchain protocols. Designed for teams building multi-chain applications, trading systems, analytics platforms, and AI agents that need reliable, high-performance blockchain connectivity without the overhead of running their own nodes, Chainstack serves developers ranging from solo builders on a free plan to enterprise trading desks on dedicated infrastructure. For Nigerian Web3 developers, DeFi teams, and blockchain startups, Chainstack provides the node access layer that is the foundation of every blockchain application. Nigeria's growing blockchain developer community needs reliable, low-latency access to Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, Base, and other networks. Running your own blockchain node is impractical for most Nigerian startups — it requires significant cloud infrastructure costs, continuous maintenance, and weeks of initial chain synchronization. Chainstack eliminates all of that by providing managed, globally distributed nodes that Nigerian developers can start using in minutes with a free-tier API key. Chainstack provides RPC (Remote Procedure Call) endpoints for reading and writing to supported blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, and 65+ more. Key capabilities include: full node RPC for current-state queries; archive node access for complete historical data going back to the genesis block; WebSocket subscriptions for real-time event listening; Yellowstone gRPC streaming for ultra-low-latency Solana data (blocks, transactions, account changes); advanced token and NFT APIs; and global routing that automatically directs requests to the nearest region for the lowest possible latency. Archive node access is particularly valuable for Nigerian blockchain analytics companies and DeFi protocols that need historical data. A full node only stores the current blockchain state — it cannot answer questions about what an address's balance was six months ago. Archive nodes store every historical state, enabling queries like "what was the ETH balance of this address at block 15,000,000?" This historical data layer is essential for backtesting, analytics, and compliance workflows. The Yellowstone gRPC streaming interface for Solana is a premium capability that enables sub-millisecond data delivery for Solana-specific events: new blocks, new transactions, account state changes, and program-specific events. For Nigerian DeFi trading systems and MEV (maximal extractable value) infrastructure that operate on Solana, this real-time streaming is critical for competitive execution. Chainstack uses a Request Unit (RU) billing model rather than per-method pricing. Each API call consumes RUs from the monthly pool: full node requests cost 1 RU, archive requests cost 2 RU. This transparent billing means Nigerian developers always know exactly what their usage costs. The free Developer plan provides 3 million RUs per month with no credit card required — sufficient for building and testing most dApp features. Paid plans scale from Growth ($49/month, 20M RUs) through Pro ($199/month, 80M RUs), Business ($349/month, 140M RUs), and Enterprise ($990/month, 400M RUs with custom SLAs and dedicated infrastructure). Nigerian blockchain teams building production-scale applications — exchanges, wallets, DeFi protocols, NFT platforms — benefit from Chainstack's globally distributed node network. Chainstack operates nodes across multiple cloud regions, and its global routing automatically connects each request to the nearest available node. This reduces latency for Nigerian developers and their end users compared to a single-region node provider. For latency-sensitive applications like trading bots and real-time price feeds, this geographic distribution matters. Multi-chain support in a single platform is another key advantage. Rather than managing separate accounts and configurations across Alchemy (for Ethereum), Helius (for Solana), and other per-chain providers, Nigerian developers can manage all blockchain connectivity from Chainstack's unified dashboard. One account, one billing relationship, and one API key pattern across every supported chain simplifies developer operations for teams managing complex multi-chain infrastructure. Authentication uses API keys generated in the Chainstack dashboard under Settings. Keys are embedded directly in the RPC endpoint URL for most protocols, or passed as a header for HTTP-based requests. WebSocket connections include the API key in the WebSocket URL. No geo-blocking has been reported for Nigerian users — Chainstack is a global infrastructure provider accessible from Nigeria without restrictions. Sign up with an email address and the free Developer plan is immediately available with no credit card required.
Payments, Development Tools, Banking & Fintech
Rapyd is a global Fintech-as-a-Service (FaaS) platform that provides businesses with a single API to collect payments, disburse payouts, and manage financial operations across 100+ countries and 900+ local payment methods. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, Rapyd is backed by Stripe and other major investors, and has a community of 50,000+ developers. The Rapyd API covers the complete payment lifecycle: online checkout, virtual accounts, hosted payment pages, multi-currency wallets, card issuing, FX conversion, and bulk disbursements. The Rapyd API is RESTful with JSON payloads. Documentation is at docs.rapyd.net. Authentication uses HMAC SHA-256 signing — a security scheme where every API request is signed using the access key and secret key provided during onboarding. This is more complex than Bearer Token auth and requires developers to implement the signing algorithm correctly. The signature is computed from the HTTP method, endpoint path, salt, timestamp, access key, and request body, then base64-encoded and included in the request header. Rapyd provides code samples in multiple languages to simplify implementation. Rapyd's core product for global payments is the Collect API, which enables businesses to accept local payment methods in 100+ countries. Rather than integrating with dozens of country-specific payment processors, businesses integrate Rapyd once and get access to payment methods including bank transfers, cash payment networks, direct debit, mobile wallets, and card networks in each country. For Nigeria and Africa, Rapyd's local payment method coverage includes relevant African payment rails — exact Nigerian payment methods available can be queried via the Rapyd Payment Methods API (GET /v1/payment_methods/country?country=NG). The Payout API enables mass disbursements to bank accounts and e-wallets globally. Businesses can send payments to employees, contractors, vendors, and customers in 100+ countries. Rapyd automatically handles FX conversion when the payout currency differs from the source currency. Rapyd also offers multi-currency wallets — virtual accounts that can hold balances in multiple currencies. This is useful for platforms managing funds on behalf of multiple currencies and wanting to minimize FX conversion costs by holding funds in the appropriate currency. Card issuing is another major feature — businesses can use the Rapyd API to issue virtual and physical Visa/Mastercard cards to their users in supported markets. This powers expense management tools, corporate card programs, and employee benefit cards. The Rapyd sandbox environment is fully featured and allows testing of all payment methods, disbursements, and card operations using test credentials. The developer community at community.rapyd.net provides support and knowledge sharing. From a compliance standpoint, Rapyd is an authorized Electronic Money Institution in the UK (FCA), an authorized Payment Institution in the EU (Lituanian FSA), and holds licenses in other jurisdictions. For Africa and Nigeria specifically, Rapyd works with local regulated partners to ensure compliance with CBN requirements. Frequently Asked Questions: Does Rapyd support Nigeria directly? Nigeria is accessible through Rapyd's Africa local payment method network. Use the Payment Methods API with country=NG to see currently available Nigerian payment methods. Why does Rapyd use HMAC SHA-256 instead of Bearer tokens? HMAC signing provides additional security for high-value enterprise transactions — each request is individually signed, preventing replay attacks and request forgery. Can Nigerian businesses sign up for Rapyd directly? Businesses need to have a legal entity in a Rapyd-supported country. Nigerian companies should contact Rapyd to confirm current onboarding eligibility.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
KuCoin is a top-10 global cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, offering a comprehensive REST and WebSocket API for spot trading, futures trading, margin trading, and account management. Known for its extensive altcoin listings — often listing new projects weeks or months before major exchanges — KuCoin is popular among traders who want early access to emerging crypto assets. Unlike Binance and Coinbase, KuCoin is accessible to Nigerian users without reported geo-blocking, making it one of the few major global exchanges where Nigerian traders can create accounts and trade programmatically. Nigeria's crypto trading community is highly active in altcoin markets. Nigerian traders follow new project launches, participate in early token sales, and trade emerging assets that Nigerian local exchanges do not list. KuCoin's catalog of 700+ trading pairs — spanning established cryptocurrencies, DeFi tokens, layer-2 assets, and newly listed altcoins — gives Nigerian traders access to the full breadth of the crypto market. For Nigerian developers building trading tools for this community, KuCoin's API is the gateway to this broader market. The REST API covers all aspects of exchange interaction. Market data endpoints (public, no authentication required) include current prices, 24-hour statistics, order book depth, recent trades, and OHLCV candlestick data for all trading pairs. These public endpoints allow Nigerian applications to display KuCoin prices without requiring users to connect their accounts. Private trading endpoints use a three-credential authentication scheme: API key, secret, and passphrase. The passphrase adds an extra layer of security beyond the standard key/secret pair. All private requests require a timestamp and HMAC-SHA256 signature. Nigerian developers building trading bots must implement this signature scheme correctly — the documentation provides detailed examples in multiple programming languages. Spot trading operations cover the full order lifecycle: place limit, market, and stop-limit orders; query open orders; cancel orders; and retrieve filled trade history. KuCoin also supports advanced order types including iceberg orders (large orders divided into small visible portions) and time-in-force options, giving Nigerian algorithmic traders the tools for sophisticated execution strategies. Futures trading on KuCoin Futures provides access to perpetual and quarterly Bitcoin and altcoin futures contracts. Leverage up to 100x is available (subject to account verification level and risk management). Nigerian traders who use futures for hedging their spot positions or for leveraged directional trading can manage all of this through the API. The P2P trading feature on KuCoin allows Nigerian users to buy and sell crypto with NGN directly — without bank transfer restrictions affecting major exchanges. While P2P operations are done through the web interface rather than the API, the underlying crypto obtained through P2P can then be traded programmatically via the API. This makes KuCoin one of the most practical exchanges for Nigerian users who need both a fiat on-ramp (via P2P) and programmatic trading capability. KuCoin charges 0.1% maker/taker fees by default, reducible by holding KCS (KuCoin Shares) tokens. Active traders who hold KCS in their accounts benefit from fee discounts proportional to their KCS balance — an incentive for high-frequency Nigerian traders to hold KCS as part of their exchange strategy. The sandbox environment (sandbox.kucoin.com) provides a test API with simulated trading, allowing Nigerian developers to test trading bot logic and API integrations without risking real funds.
Blockchain, Payments
ChangeNOW is a non-custodial instant cryptocurrency exchange service that provides an API for embedding crypto-to-crypto swaps directly into wallets, apps, and platforms. Unlike centralized exchanges (Binance, Coinbase) that require user account creation, KYC verification, and custody of funds on the exchange, ChangeNOW operates as a swap service: users provide their source asset and destination wallet address, ChangeNOW executes the exchange across its liquidity network, and the converted asset lands directly in the user's own wallet. The entire swap is non-custodial — ChangeNOW never holds user funds beyond the brief swap execution window. For Nigerian developers building crypto wallets, payment processors, and DeFi applications, ChangeNOW is one of the most practical APIs for providing swap functionality. Nigeria's crypto users frequently need to convert between assets — swapping Bitcoin received from a remittance into USDT for stability, converting accumulated altcoins into BTC for cold storage, or exchanging ETH for BNB to take advantage of lower gas fees. Without a swap API like ChangeNOW, these conversions require users to go to an exchange, which is cumbersome and, for some Nigerian users, inaccessible due to exchange restrictions. The exchange rate estimation endpoint (/exchange/estimated-amount) is the starting point for any swap flow. Given a source currency (e.g., BTC), destination currency (e.g., USDT), and amount, it returns the estimated output amount, the exchange rate, and the estimated completion time. This allows Nigerian applications to show users the exact expected output before they initiate the swap — building trust and transparency in the exchange process. ChangeNOW supports both floating rate and fixed rate exchanges. With floating rates, the final output amount may differ slightly from the estimate due to market movements during the brief swap window — the user gets the market rate at execution time. With fixed rates, ChangeNOW locks in the exchange rate for a short window (typically 30-120 seconds) during which the user must send the source asset — the output is guaranteed at the quoted amount. Fixed rates are more user-friendly for Nigerian users who want certainty about what they will receive. Creating an exchange (/exchange) generates a unique deposit address where the user must send the source asset. The API returns this address, the expected output amount, and an exchange ID for tracking. Once ChangeNOW detects the incoming funds, it executes the swap and sends the converted asset to the user's destination address. The entire process typically completes in 2-15 minutes depending on the blockchain confirmation requirements for the source asset. Transaction status tracking via the /exchange/by-id endpoint allows applications to display real-time swap progress to Nigerian users: waiting for deposit, confirming source blockchain, exchanging, sending to destination, and completed. This status feed is important for user experience — crypto swaps are not instant, and users need reassurance that their funds are being processed correctly. Coverage of 850+ trading pairs means Nigerian users can swap virtually any commonly held cryptocurrency. The coverage includes Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), USDT (on Tron, Ethereum, and BNB Chain), BNB, Solana (SOL), XRP, Dogecoin, and hundreds of altcoins. Minimum amounts vary by pair based on liquidity conditions and blockchain fees; the API provides a minimum amount endpoint so applications can validate user input before attempting a swap. The API is completely free — ChangeNOW earns revenue from the spread between exchange rates, so there are no subscription fees or per-call charges for API usage. A free API key is obtained from changenow.io/api with no credit card required, and no geo-blocking for Nigerian developers has been reported.
Payments
Mono is a Nigerian open banking and financial data infrastructure company that enables developers to build financial products by connecting customer bank accounts for data access, payments, and identity verification. Founded in 2020 by Abdul Hassan and Prakhar Sharma, Mono has raised funding from Sequoia Capital India and other top investors, and is one of Africa's leading open banking providers, covering over 30 Nigerian banks and financial institutions. The Mono platform is organized into three main API products: Financial Data, Payments (DirectPay), and Identity Verification. All three use the same developer credentials and are accessed via the Mono Connect widget — an embeddable authentication flow that allows customers to authorize Mono's access to their bank account using their internet banking credentials, in accordance with CBN open banking guidelines. The Financial Data API provides programmatic access to a bank account's transaction history, current balance, income patterns, and bank statements after the customer authorizes access through the Connect widget. Lenders use this data for credit scoring — analyzing spending patterns, income credits, and debt obligations from actual bank statements rather than relying on self-reported income. The transactions endpoint returns categorized transaction records covering 12–24 months of history depending on the bank. The Payments API, branded as DirectPay, enables businesses to initiate single direct debits from a linked customer bank account — charging the account directly without requiring the customer to enter card details. DirectPay is powered by open banking standards, with all transactions encrypted end-to-end. Pricing is 1% per successful transaction, capped at NGN 1,000. This makes DirectPay significantly cheaper than card payment fees (Paystack charges 1.5% + ₦100 capped at ₦2,000) for high-value transactions — for example, a ₦500,000 loan repayment via DirectPay costs ₦1,000 (capped), versus ₦2,100 via card. Mono also offers a Recurring Direct Debit product — where a customer authorizes ongoing debits on a schedule — enabling subscription billing, loan installment plans, and salary deductions using open banking mandates rather than card tokens. Authentication is handled via the Client Secret Key, which is included in request headers as mono-sec-key. Public keys are used client-side to initialize the Connect widget. Mono provides SDKs for React, React Native, JavaScript, Android, and iOS — all of which embed the Connect widget and handle the token exchange flow. Most integrations take 2–4 hours. For identity verification, Mono offers BVN verification, NIN verification, and document verification (government-issued ID). These are standalone API calls that do not require bank account linking — useful for KYC onboarding where the business needs to verify user identity before granting access to financial services. Mono's Identity API also supports address verification and company verification via CAC data — enabling Know Your Business (KYB) checks for B2B platforms and marketplace operators. The sandbox environment is available at mono.co/sandbox with test bank credentials provided in the documentation. All three products (Financial Data, DirectPay, Identity Verification) are testable in sandbox mode before going live. From a compliance standpoint, Mono operates under the CBN's Regulatory Framework for Open Banking in Nigeria. All data access is customer-authorized and consent-revocable. Mono is registered with the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) as a data controller and processor. The Connect widget displays clearly what data a business is requesting before the customer approves access. Mono covers over 30 Nigerian financial institutions including GTBank, First Bank, Zenith Bank, Access Bank, UBA, Sterling Bank, Kuda, OPay, PalmPay, and most major microfinance banks. Frequently Asked Questions: Can I access a customer's bank account without their permission? No — the Mono Connect widget requires explicit customer authorization. The customer sees exactly what data the platform is requesting and must provide their internet banking credentials to approve access. How long does bank account access last? Customer authorizations can expire or be revoked. Mono's refresh token mechanism allows businesses to refresh data access periodically, but customers can revoke access at any time via the Mono Customer Portal. Does DirectPay work for all Nigerian banks? DirectPay covers 30+ institutions but not all banks. Coverage continues to expand as Mono adds new integrations. Can I use Mono for business account verification? Yes — Mono's Identity API includes CAC verification for business account checks, in addition to individual BVN/NIN verification.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Currencyapi.com is a modern, developer-first currency conversion API that provides real-time and historical exchange rate data for over 170 fiat currencies and major cryptocurrencies. Built for developers who need accurate, fast, and reliable FX data with a clean developer experience, Currencyapi.com stands out for combining both traditional fiat currencies (including Nigerian Naira, NGN) and cryptocurrency rates in a single unified API endpoint — a rare feature that reduces the number of integrations needed for multi-asset financial applications. **What Currencyapi.com Does** The API delivers exchange rate data in two primary modes: real-time rates (updated as frequently as every 30 seconds on the highest tier) and historical rates (available on paid plans). All responses are in JSON format. The API is RESTful and authentication uses an API key, which can be passed as a Bearer token in the Authorization header or as a query parameter. A Postman collection and SDKs in multiple programming languages are available to accelerate integration. **Nigeria Support (NGN)** Nigerian Naira (NGN) is fully supported as both a base and target currency. Nigerian developers can fetch the current rate of NGN against any of the 170+ supported currencies, convert NGN amounts to USD or EUR, or pull historical NGN rates for accounting and reporting purposes. **Cryptocurrencies + Fiat in One Call** Unlike most exchange rate APIs that handle only fiat currencies, Currencyapi.com includes major cryptocurrency rates (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other prominent tokens) alongside fiat currencies in the same API response. This makes it particularly useful for Nigerian crypto/fintech hybrid applications that need to display both NGN fiat values and crypto asset values without calling separate APIs. **Pricing Plans** - **Free**: $0/month — 300 requests/month, daily updates, 1 API key, personal use only - **Small**: $9.99/month — 15,000 requests/month, hourly updates, 1 API key, commercial use - **Medium**: $39.99/month — 600,000 requests/month, 60-second updates, 2 API keys, sandbox access - **Large**: $79.99/month — 1.7 million requests/month, 30-second updates, 5 API keys, sandbox access The free tier (300 req/month) is suitable for prototyping and small personal projects. Commercial applications should use at minimum the Small plan ($9.99/month). Production applications needing near real-time rates require the Medium or Large plan. **Sandbox Environment** A dedicated sandbox environment is available on the Medium ($39.99/month) and Large ($79.99/month) plans. This allows developers to test API integrations, simulate responses, and validate error-handling scenarios without consuming live API quota. The sandbox is not available on the Free or Small plans. **Rate Limits & Quotas** Rate limits are enforced per calendar month. Quotas are tracked in API response headers. Once the monthly quota is exhausted, additional requests return an error response until the quota resets at the start of the next month. **Update Frequency** Exchange rate freshness is tied to plan tier: - Free: Updated once per day - Small: Updated every hour - Medium: Updated every 60 seconds - Large: Updated every 30 seconds For production Nigerian fintech applications that need accurate live rates (e.g., payment conversions, live rate displays), the Medium plan's 60-second update cycle is typically sufficient. **Historical Data** Historical exchange rate data is available on paid plans — allowing developers to query the NGN exchange rate on any specific past date. This is essential for accounting applications, audit trail generation, and period-specific financial reporting. **Developer Experience** Currencyapi.com provides a Postman collection for immediate API exploration, SDKs in multiple languages to accelerate integration, and clear documentation at currencyapi.com/docs. The API follows standard REST conventions, making it straightforward to integrate into any backend stack. **Important Limitation** Like most global exchange rate APIs, Currencyapi.com provides official mid-market exchange rates, not Nigerian parallel market (black market) or Bureau de Change rates. For Nigerian parallel market rates, use a Nigeria-specific source like Monierate. The official rates may diverge significantly from street rates during periods of high Naira volatility. **Frequently Asked Questions** Q: Can I use Currencyapi.com for free in production? A: The free plan allows 300 requests/month for personal use only. For commercial production use, the Small plan ($9.99/month) with 15,000 requests is the minimum. Q: Does Currencyapi.com support NGN? A: Yes. NGN is one of 170+ supported currencies. Q: Does it include cryptocurrency prices? A: Yes. Major cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, and others) are included alongside fiat currencies in the same API endpoint. Q: Is there a sandbox for testing? A: Yes, but only on Medium ($39.99/month) and Large ($79.99/month) plans. Free and Small plan users test against the live API. Q: Does it provide Nigerian black market rates? A: No. Only official mid-market rates. Use Monierate for Nigerian parallel market data.
Nigeria Open Data, Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Open Exchange Rates is one of the most widely deployed foreign exchange rate APIs in the world, used by thousands of applications ranging from e-commerce platforms and accounting software to fintech apps and content management systems. The service provides clean, reliable JSON exchange rate data for over 200 currencies, with rates updated hourly on the free tier and in real time on paid plans. Historical data going back to 2001 is available for all supported currencies, making it one of the deepest historical forex datasets accessible through a simple API. For Nigerian developers building currency-aware applications, Open Exchange Rates provides dependable NGN rate data alongside every other major world currency. Nigeria's currency situation makes exchange rate data critically important for application developers. The Nigerian Naira (NGN) has experienced significant depreciation against the US Dollar and other hard currencies over the past decade, driven by oil price volatility, foreign exchange policy changes, and structural economic factors. Nigerian applications that deal with foreign currencies — e-commerce platforms, accounting tools, remittance services, salary calculation apps for multinational employees, and investment platforms — all need accurate, regularly updated exchange rate data to function correctly. The /latest.json endpoint is the most commonly used endpoint, returning current exchange rates for all 200+ currencies from the specified base currency. On the free plan, only USD is available as the base currency — meaning all rates are expressed as units of currency per 1 USD. The USD/NGN rate is available on the free plan. For Nigerian applications that need NGN as the base currency (showing how much USD, EUR, or GBP costs in naira terms), the Starter plan ($12/month) enables any base currency. For most Nigerian applications, the USD-base approach with client-side inversion is functionally equivalent. Historical rates are available via /historical/{YYYY-MM-DD}.json, returning exchange rates as they were on any past date. This capability is essential for Nigerian accounting software and ERP systems that need to record foreign currency transactions at the exchange rate on the transaction date — a requirement under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and a common requirement in Nigerian corporate accounting practice. With rates available back to 2001, Nigerian finance teams can reconstruct historical exchange rate data for any period their records cover. The /convert endpoint performs currency conversion: specify an amount, a from-currency, and a to-currency, and receive the converted amount at the current rate. For Nigerian e-commerce platforms that display product prices in multiple currencies, this endpoint handles the arithmetic server-side without the developer needing to fetch rates and calculate manually. The /time-series endpoint returns exchange rate data over a date range, ideal for building trend charts and calculating average rates over periods. A Nigerian corporate treasurer tracking the average USD/NGN rate over each quarter, or a Nigerian researcher analyzing the correlation between naira depreciation and inflation, can use time-series data directly without downloading and processing historical files. Open Exchange Rates also provides OHLCV (open, high, low, close, volume) daily rate data for currency pairs — useful for Nigerian forex analytics tools that need to display candlestick charts or calculate volatility metrics for currency pairs. The free plan provides 1,000 API requests per month with hourly rate updates — sufficient for a low-traffic application or prototype. The Starter plan ($12/month) provides 10,000 requests per month, unlocks any base currency, and removes the USD-only restriction. The Production plan ($97/month) provides real-time rate updates and 100,000 requests per month, appropriate for high-traffic Nigerian fintech applications. All plans use a simple app_id API key parameter with no request signing, making integration extremely quick.
Payments
RexPay is a Nigerian payment gateway solution developed by Global Accelerex Limited, a leading electronic payment and business management solutions company operating in Nigeria and West Africa. Global Accelerex holds both a CBN Payment Solution Service Provider (PSSP) certification and a CBN Payment Terminal Service Provider (PTSP) certification — a dual certification that covers online payment processing and POS terminal management respectively. This makes Global Accelerex one of the few Nigerian companies with both licenses, giving RexPay institutional-grade credibility as a payment infrastructure partner. The RexPay API is RESTful with JSON payloads. Documentation is available at rexpay-docs.globalaccelerex.com. Authentication uses an API Key obtained from the RexPay merchant dashboard. Developers initialize payment transactions by sending a POST request with the amount and transaction reference, then display the RexPay checkout to the customer. RexPay supports three payment channels in Nigeria: card payments (Visa, Mastercard, Verve with 3D Secure / 2FA verification), internet banking transfers (bank-to-bank transfers via the customer's internet banking), and USSD (for customers on basic mobile phones without internet access). This covers the three primary payment behaviors of Nigerian consumers: card users, mobile banking users, and USSD users. For WordPress-based e-commerce stores, RexPay provides a WooCommerce plugin that can be installed directly from the WordPress plugin directory. This no-code integration allows Nigerian merchants to add RexPay checkout without writing a single line of code — simply install, configure the API key from the dashboard, and payments start flowing. Pricing for RexPay starts from $0 per month, indicating no mandatory platform fee. Transaction fees are commission-based and negotiated during merchant onboarding. The exact percentage rates are not published publicly but are competitive with other Nigerian gateways. The $0/month model makes RexPay accessible to small businesses and startups that cannot commit to monthly subscription fees. The sandbox environment allows full testing of all payment channels. Moving to live requires completing the Global Accelerex KYC process, which involves submitting CAC documents, director BVN, and business bank account information. From a compliance standpoint, Global Accelerex is CBN-certified under both the PSSP and PTSP frameworks, meaning that all payment transactions processed through RexPay meet CBN regulatory standards. PCI-DSS compliance ensures card data is handled and stored securely. RexPay is a focused Nigeria-only payment gateway — it does not currently support international payment corridors or other African countries. This is a trade-off that simplifies compliance but limits its usefulness for businesses with pan-African payment needs. Known challenges: RexPay's documentation and developer community are smaller than Paystack or Flutterwave. Advanced features like split payments, virtual accounts, and recurring billing are not currently supported. International card acceptance (for non-Nigerian Visa/Mastercard holders) may have limitations. Frequently Asked Questions: What is Global Accelerex? Global Accelerex is the parent company of RexPay. It is one of Nigeria's oldest e-payment companies, providing POS terminals, payment switches, and software solutions to Nigerian banks and enterprises since the early 2000s. Does RexPay work with WooCommerce? Yes — a WooCommerce plugin is available that allows Nigerian WordPress store owners to accept payments through RexPay without any coding. Can I use RexPay for B2B corporate payments? Yes — RexPay supports internet banking transfers, which is the preferred payment method for Nigerian corporate clients making large business-to-business payments.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Alpha Vantage is a comprehensive financial data API covering US stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, forex exchange rates, cryptocurrencies, commodities, and economic indicators — all accessible through a single, consistent REST API with a generous free tier. The platform is particularly notable for its extensive library of over 50 pre-calculated technical indicators (RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, EMA, SMA, and many more), which are available as first-class API endpoints rather than requiring developers to compute them from raw price data. For financial application developers and quantitative analysts, Alpha Vantage provides a rich data foundation that spans traditional finance and crypto in a single integration. Nigerian developers should be aware of an important context distinction: Alpha Vantage's API key and data endpoints are accessible from Nigeria without geographic restrictions, and the forex and cryptocurrency data are fully usable for Nigerian applications. However, Alpha Vantage is primarily oriented toward US stock market data — NYSE and NASDAQ-listed companies, US ETFs, and US economic indicators. Nigerian Stock Exchange (NGX) listed stocks are not covered. The ng_support=false designation reflects that the primary use case (US equities) does not serve Nigerian users, not that the API itself is blocked. Nigerian developers building forex tools, crypto analytics, and global market data applications can use Alpha Vantage productively. The Forex (FX) module provides exchange rate data for 180+ currency pairs including USD/NGN, EUR/NGN, GBP/NGN, and all major cross-currency combinations. The FX_DAILY endpoint returns daily OHLCV (open, high, low, close, volume) data going back 20+ years for any forex pair — enabling Nigerian developers to build long-term trend charts showing the USD/NGN rate history. FX_INTRADAY provides intraday data at 1-minute, 5-minute, 15-minute, 30-minute, and 60-minute intervals, enabling high-frequency forex rate displays for Nigerian trading platforms. The Cryptocurrency module covers Bitcoin, Ethereum, and hundreds of altcoins with DIGITAL_CURRENCY_DAILY, DIGITAL_CURRENCY_WEEKLY, and DIGITAL_CURRENCY_MONTHLY endpoints. Each crypto data point includes both the USD value and the value in a specified market currency — Nigerian developers can request BTC/USD data with NGN conversion included in every response, enabling portfolio tracking applications that display crypto values directly in naira. Technical Indicators are Alpha Vantage's most distinctive feature. Rather than fetching raw OHLCV data and computing indicators client-side, Nigerian developers can call endpoints like GET /query?function=RSI&symbol=BTC&interval=daily to receive pre-calculated RSI values going back years. The 50+ available indicators cover trend-following (EMA, SMA, WMA, DEMA, TEMA), momentum (RSI, MACD, STOCH, CCI, MOM, ROC), volatility (BBANDS, ATR), and volume indicators. For Nigerian quantitative developers building algorithmic trading systems or analysis tools, this eliminates significant computational overhead. The Economic Indicators module covers US macroeconomic data: Federal Reserve interest rates, CPI inflation, unemployment, GDP, and treasury yields. While these are US-focused metrics, they are globally relevant — Nigerian investors and analysts closely track US Fed rate decisions because they directly affect global capital flows, dollar strength, and by extension NGN/USD exchange rates. The News & Sentiment endpoint returns financial news articles with AI-generated sentiment scores for specific stocks, sectors, or forex pairs. Nigerian financial analysts building market research tools can use this endpoint to track sentiment around USD/NGN, US equities held by Nigerian investors, or cryptocurrency markets. The free tier provides 25 requests per day and 500 per month — sufficient for learning the API and building prototypes. Premium plans starting at $50/month (75 requests per minute) support production applications. No credit card is required for the free tier, making it accessible to Nigerian developers exploring the platform without financial commitment.
Payments, Development Tools
Digital payments API for quick and easy money transfers. NowNow provides APIs for person-to-person transfers, bill payments, and merchant payments. Designed for fast, accessible payment processing across Africa.
Development Tools, Payments
Epic Pay (Epic Payment Technologies Limited) is a Nigerian PSS-licensed payment gateway offering a full suite of developer APIs through a dedicated developer portal at developer.epicpay.com. The platform is PCI DSS 4.0 certified — one of the most current versions of the payment security standard — and provides Payment, Boarding/Agent, and Reporting APIs alongside SDKs for Java and C#/.NET. Epic Pay is notable for its white-label capabilities and its active developer community, the Epic Pay Developers Circle. What the API Does The Epic Pay API suite covers three main areas: (1) Payment API — initiate one-time and recurring payments, tokenize card payloads, manage customer records, and perform Address Verification Service (AVS) checks. (2) Boarding/Agent API — programmatically onboard merchants and agents onto the Epic Pay gateway, configure their settings, and manage their accounts. (3) Reporting API — retrieve real-time and historical transaction data for reconciliation and financial reporting. How Developers Use It Developers access the portal at developer.epicpay.com, create an account, obtain API keys, and integrate using the provided documentation and SDKs. Java and C#/.NET SDKs are available to simplify integration. The API is REST-based. A Dev Lab environment is available for sandbox testing. AVS codes are returned in real-time within sale and authorize responses. Pricing Not publicly listed. Developers can access the developer portal and Dev Lab for free. Transaction fee structure requires contacting Epic Pay directly. As a PSS-licensed provider, fees are likely in line with CBN-regulated payment industry standards. Authentication API Key from the EpicPay Gateway Developer Portal. Keys are used to authenticate all API requests. Compliance PSS (Payment Service Solution) licensed by the CBN. PCI DSS 4.0 certified — one of the most current PCI versions, demonstrating strong card data security practices. Challenges and Gotchas (1) No USSD or crypto support. (2) Pricing not public — requires direct engagement. (3) Less community presence than Paystack/Flutterwave — documentation depth may be lower. (4) White-label and agent boarding make it more suitable for ISOs and platform builders than simple merchant integrations. Company Background Epic Payment Technologies Limited is a Nigerian payment company focused on providing payment infrastructure for businesses, developers, and agent networks. The Developers Circle community initiative shows active engagement with the Nigerian developer ecosystem. FAQs Q: Does Epic Pay support recurring billing? A: Yes. The Payment API supports recurring payments with tokenized card storage. Q: Is there a sandbox? A: Yes. A Dev Lab environment is available at developer.epicpay.com/Docs/DevLab. Q: What SDKs are available? A: Java and C#/.NET SDKs are available on GitHub under EpicGateway organization. Q: Can I build a white-label payment product with Epic Pay? A: Yes. Epic Pay specifically supports white-label payment platform deployments with the Boarding API for sub-merchant management. PCI DSS 4.0 certification at Epic Pay ensures that the platform meets the most current version of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, providing Nigerian merchants with confidence that card data processed through Epic Pay is handled in compliance with international card scheme security requirements. For Nigerian businesses that accept card payments through Epic Pay's infrastructure, the certification removes independent PCI compliance burden from the merchant's own systems for card data that flows through Epic Pay's hosted solutions. The white-label capability of Epic Pay allows Nigerian fintech companies to deploy a branded payment gateway under their own product identity, using Epic Pay's underlying infrastructure and licensing without exposing the white-label arrangement to end customers. This model benefits Nigerian fintechs that want to offer payment collection as part of a broader product suite — a lending platform offering collection infrastructure to borrowers, an HR platform providing payroll collection tools — under their own brand without building and licensing payment infrastructure independently. Agent boarding through Epic Pay's multi-API developer portal enables platforms managing agent networks to programmatically register agents, configure their access levels, and provision their payment acceptance capabilities. For Nigerian platforms operating agent banking networks, field sales agent networks, or merchant partner programs, automated agent onboarding through an API dramatically reduces the operational cost and time of expanding the agent network compared to manual registration processes.
Payments, Development Tools
Nomba is a Nigerian payment infrastructure company and CBN-licensed Payment Service Provider. Formerly known as Kudi, Nomba pivoted from a consumer-facing payment agent app to a comprehensive B2B payments infrastructure platform serving Nigerian businesses with APIs for checkout, virtual accounts, transfers, and POS terminal management. Nomba is backed by Stripe and significant venture capital, and powers millions of transactions daily across Nigeria's merchant and agent banking ecosystem. The Nomba API is RESTful with JSON payloads and uses OAuth2 for authentication. Developers can authenticate via two methods: the Client Credentials grant (server-to-server, for backend integrations) or the PKCE (Proof Key for Code Exchange) grant (for mobile and single-page app integrations where the secret cannot be safely stored). In both cases, an access_token is generated and passed in every API request as an Authorization: Bearer <token> header. API keys are retrieved from the Nomba business dashboard under Settings > API Keys. The Checkout API is the core product for accepting payments. Developers initialize a checkout session server-side by sending a POST request with the amount, currency (NGN), and a unique transaction reference. Nomba returns a hosted checkout URL that the developer redirects the customer to. The checkout supports card payments (Verve, Visa, Mastercard), USSD, and bank transfers. Nomba handles the entire payment experience on its hosted page — merchants do not need to build a custom checkout interface. For fund collection from specific customers, Nomba supports Virtual Accounts — unique bank account numbers assigned to individual customers or transactions. When a customer transfers any amount to their virtual account number, Nomba fires a webhook confirming the payment. This is ideal for Nigerian wallet top-ups, marketplace deposits, and savings apps where customers fund their balance via bank transfer. The Transfers API enables instant outbound bank transfers to any Nigerian bank account. Developers can send disbursements by specifying the destination bank code, account number, amount, and a unique transfer reference. Nomba executes the transfer via the Nigerian banking system. This is commonly used for payroll, agent commissions, loan disbursements, and refunds. Nomba also supports tokenized card flows — when a customer first pays with a card, Nomba can return a card authorization token that the merchant stores and uses for future charges without requiring the customer to re-enter card details. This enables installment plans, subscription-like products, and one-click repeat payments. For merchants with physical locations, Nomba provides a Terminals API that enables developers to build custom POS applications. Integrators can send payment requests to Nomba POS terminals, receive confirmation webhooks, and build merchant dashboards that pull transaction data from the terminal network. This is a unique capability that distinguishes Nomba from pure online payment gateways like Paystack or Flutterwave. Webhooks are available for all major events: payment success, payment failure, transfer completion, and virtual account credit. Developers must validate the webhook signature before processing events to ensure authenticity. The Nomba sandbox environment is available for all API products. Developers can test checkout, virtual accounts, and transfers without processing real money. Moving to live requires completing Nomba's business onboarding and CBN KYC verification. From a compliance standpoint, Nomba holds a CBN Payment Service Bank license and is licensed as a Payment Service Provider. All transactions are processed within the CBN regulatory framework. The platform is used by hundreds of thousands of Nigerian merchants, particularly small businesses, market traders, and logistics companies that use Nomba POS terminals. Frequently Asked Questions: How is Nomba different from Paystack? Paystack is primarily an online payment gateway. Nomba additionally offers POS terminal integration, agent banking infrastructure, and the Global Payout API for cross-border disbursements — making it more comprehensive for merchants with physical and digital presence. Is Nomba pricing public? Nomba does not publish exact API pricing. Contact the Nomba team for transaction fee schedules based on your volume and use case. Can I use Nomba for cross-border payments? The main Nomba API is for domestic Nigerian payments. For cross-border disbursements, use the separate Nomba Global Payout API which was launched in March 2026.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Currency-api is a free, open-source currency exchange rates API that provides daily exchange rate data for over 160 currencies with absolutely no authentication, registration, or API key required. Maintained as a community project and hosted on GitHub, the API serves as a zero-friction starting point for developers who need basic currency conversion capabilities without the overhead of account creation, key management, or usage billing. The API works by fetching exchange rate data from public financial sources and exposing it through simple, predictable REST endpoints. To retrieve the current rate between any two currencies, developers simply make an HTTP GET request to the endpoint with the base currency code and target currency code. The response is a clean JSON object containing the exchange rate, making it immediately usable in web, mobile, and server-side applications with minimal parsing overhead. Historical rates are accessible by specifying a date in the request URL, allowing developers to retrieve the exchange rate that was in effect on any past date. This backward-looking capability is important for applications that process historical financial data — accounting tools that record the Naira value of foreign currency transactions on the date they occurred, analytics platforms that analyze currency trends over time, or audit systems that need to reconstruct historical valuations. The Nigerian Naira is supported alongside all other major and many minor global currencies. For Nigerian developers building their first currency-aware feature — perhaps adding a price converter to a personal project, building a simple FX calculator, or creating a proof-of-concept for a fintech application — Currency-api removes every barrier to entry. There are no API keys to request, no credit card to enter, no signup forms to complete. The API simply works. For professional and production applications, the lack of an SLA and the absence of rate limit documentation means Currency-api is most suitable as a development tool or for low-traffic applications where occasional downtime would not cause serious harm. Nigerian startups building MVPs and prototypes benefit from being able to test currency features without committing to a paid service, then migrating to a more robust commercial API when the application reaches production scale. The open-source nature of Currency-api means that developers who need guaranteed uptime can self-host the entire infrastructure. The project repository on GitHub includes all code needed to run the data collection and API serving components, giving technically capable Nigerian teams the option to deploy their own instance on cloud infrastructure they control. This eliminates dependency on a third-party service and removes concerns about rate limits or service discontinuation for mission-critical applications. Because no API key is required, Currency-api is particularly useful in educational settings. Nigerian university courses covering web development, fintech application building, and API integration can use Currency-api as a teaching example without requiring students to create accounts or manage credentials. The simplicity of the API makes it an ideal first REST API integration exercise for coding bootcamp students and self-taught developers across Nigeria. The API is accessed via simple GET requests with currency codes as path parameters. Responses follow a consistent JSON structure across all endpoints, making it easy to understand and integrate quickly. The GitHub project README provides clear documentation with example requests covering all supported use cases. For Nigerian freelancers and independent developers building client projects where budget constraints are a real consideration, Currency-api provides genuine production value for simple currency display features without any ongoing cost. Combined with a caching layer on the application side to avoid excessive requests to the free service, Currency-api can power reliable currency displays for Nigerian websites and apps serving audiences that need to see prices in multiple currencies.
Banking & Fintech, Trading & Currency Exchange
XE Currency Data API delivers enterprise-grade foreign exchange rate data from XE, the world most trusted currency authority with over 300 million users globally. XE has been publishing currency data since 1993 and has built its reputation on the accuracy and reliability of its mid-market exchange rates. The XE Currency Data API extends this trusted rate data to developers and enterprises who need audit-grade FX information for financial systems, banking applications, ERP platforms, and compliance reporting. XE mid-market rates represent the midpoint between buy and sell prices in the global forex market, sourced from aggregated quotes across the global interbank market. These mid-market rates serve as the internationally recognized reference point for currency conversions in financial reporting, audit, and compliance contexts. Many Nigerian financial institutions, accounting firms, and corporate treasury teams use XE rates specifically because XE is recognized as a credible, independent source that satisfies auditor and regulator expectations for rate substantiation. The Nigerian Naira is fully supported across all XE Currency Data endpoints. Given the Naira's significant volatility in recent years and the importance of accurate NGN rates for Nigerian businesses with international operations, XE's multi-source rate aggregation methodology provides better rate accuracy than single-source alternatives. Nigerian importers, exporters, and companies with foreign currency debt obligations particularly benefit from rate data that accurately captures current market conditions. Real-time rate delivery ensures that XE Currency Data always reflects the current state of global forex markets. Rates are updated continuously throughout the trading day as market prices move. For Nigerian payment processors, money transfer operators, and foreign exchange bureaux integrating XE rates into customer-facing pricing, the currency rate freshness directly affects the quality of the rates presented to customers and the accuracy of the margins being applied. Historical rate data is available going back many years, enabling retrospective financial calculations and reporting. Nigerian companies preparing financial statements under IFRS, which requires foreign currency transactions to be recorded at transaction-date exchange rates, can use XE historical rates to retrieve the rate that applied on any specific past date. This historical accuracy is critical for audit compliance where the company must be able to substantiate the exchange rates used in financial reporting. The convert endpoint performs currency conversions using XE rates, accepting source currency, target currency, and amount. For applications where only the converted amount is needed rather than the underlying rate, this endpoint simplifies implementation. The API also supports retrieving rate information for a specific list of currency pairs rather than the full currency matrix, optimizing bandwidth for applications with defined currency requirements. XE Currency Data integrates with the full XE product ecosystem. Customers using XE for business money transfers can ensure their operational systems and their FX data layer are using consistent, source-consistent rates. For Nigerian companies that use XE for international payments alongside their own applications, this alignment eliminates discrepancies between system-calculated rates and actual transfer rates. The API is offered through paid subscription plans starting at accessible monthly rates for smaller usage volumes and scaling to enterprise contracts for high-volume financial applications. All plans include access to XE's trusted mid-market rates, historical data, and support from XE's team. Nigerian enterprises with specific data requirements or integration support needs can access dedicated account management through enterprise plans. The REST API uses API key authentication with JSON responses. Comprehensive documentation, SDKs for popular programming languages, and integration guides make implementation straightforward for Nigerian development teams building currency-aware financial applications across banking, fintech, trade finance, and ERP integration contexts.
Payments, Development Tools
Busha Commerce API is the developer platform for Busha, Nigeria's leading regulated cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2019. While global exchanges like Binance and Coinbase face regulatory friction and account restrictions in Nigeria, Busha operates as a Nigerian-registered entity, holds all required local licences, and is fully compliant with Nigerian financial regulations. This makes Busha the most trusted and legally reliable option for Nigerian businesses that want to accept cryptocurrency payments, provide crypto trading services, or build crypto-powered products for Nigerian users. The Busha Commerce API specifically targets Nigerian merchants and developers who need crypto payment acceptance with Nigerian Naira settlement. Nigeria's digital economy is growing rapidly, but Nigerian businesses face persistent challenges with conventional payment infrastructure: card declines on international transactions, Forex restrictions limiting dollar-denominated purchases, and high remittance fees. Cryptocurrency — particularly USDT (a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar) — has emerged as a practical alternative for Nigerians making and receiving international payments. Busha Commerce bridges the gap between crypto payments and the Nigerian Naira banking system, enabling merchants to accept crypto from customers anywhere in the world and receive NGN in their bank accounts. The payment workflow is straightforward. A Nigerian merchant creates a payment request via the API, specifying the amount in NGN or a crypto asset. Busha returns a payment address (or QR code) and a unique payment ID. The merchant displays this to the customer. When the customer sends crypto to that address, Busha detects the blockchain transaction, converts it to NGN at the current exchange rate (if NGN settlement is selected), and delivers a webhook notification to the merchant's server confirming the payment. The merchant can then fulfill the order knowing the NGN equivalent has been credited to their Busha balance. Exchange rate endpoints provide real-time NGN/BTC, NGN/ETH, and NGN/USDT rates based on Busha's live market rates. These rates reflect the actual rates at which Busha will settle payments — not third-party price data — ensuring Nigerian merchants display accurate expected payment amounts to their customers. The rates include Busha's exchange margin, so what the merchant sees is what they will receive. Webhook notifications are the backbone of the payment detection system. When a payment is received and confirmed on-chain, Busha sends an HTTP POST to the merchant's configured webhook URL with full payment details: amount paid, asset type, exchange rate applied, NGN value, and transaction status. The webhook payload is signed with a secret key so merchants can verify it genuinely came from Busha. This event-driven architecture means Nigerian merchant backends respond immediately to payments without polling. For Nigerian freelancers and service providers, Busha Commerce enables a particularly useful workflow: generate a shareable payment link for a specific invoice amount, send it to an international client, receive USDT payment from anywhere in the world, and settle to NGN via Busha's banking integration. This circumvents the delays and fees of international wire transfers and the restrictions that Nigerian bank accounts sometimes face on receiving foreign currency. The sandbox environment allows Nigerian developers to test the complete payment flow — creating test payment requests, simulating test payments, and receiving test webhook events — without using real cryptocurrency. This makes integration development safe and fast. Busha requires business KYC verification including CAC (Corporate Affairs Commission) registration documents for merchant accounts — consistent with Nigerian financial compliance requirements. API keys are generated after verification in the Busha developer dashboard.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Birdeye is the most comprehensive DeFi data aggregator for Solana and multi-chain decentralized exchanges, providing real-time and historical price data, wallet portfolio analytics, token security assessments, liquidity pool information, and trader activity analysis. As Solana has grown into a major DeFi ecosystem — with billions of dollars in trading volume across Raydium, Orca, Jupiter, and other DEXes — the need for reliable aggregated price data has grown with it. Birdeye fills this need by indexing every token pair on every major Solana DEX and providing that data through a clean, well-documented REST API. For Nigerian developers building Solana trading tools, DeFi dashboards, and crypto analytics platforms, Birdeye is the essential data layer. Nigeria's crypto community has a significant Solana presence, driven by Solana's low transaction fees (fractions of a cent), fast confirmation times (sub-second), and vibrant meme coin and DeFi ecosystem. Nigerian traders who participate in Solana DeFi — trading tokens on Jupiter aggregator, providing liquidity on Raydium, or hunting for new token launches — need data tools that cover the Solana ecosystem comprehensively. Birdeye is the API that powers most of the Solana trading terminals and analytics tools these traders use. Token price data through Birdeye covers every token with liquidity on Solana's DEXes — not just the top 100 listed on centralized exchanges, but every long-tail SPL token that trades on-chain. For any token address, Birdeye returns the current price in USD and SOL, 24-hour price change, 24-hour trading volume, and market cap (where calculable). This broad coverage is essential for Nigerian developers building tools for traders who venture into small-cap and newly launched Solana tokens. OHLCV (open, high, low, close, volume) price history is available for any Solana token, with multiple time resolutions: 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day, and 1 week. This data is the foundation for rendering candlestick charts in trading terminals and analytics dashboards. For Nigerian fintech developers building charting tools, Birdeye's OHLCV endpoint with Solana tokens fills the gap that traditional crypto data APIs (CoinGecko, CMC) leave unfilled — those platforms only track tokens listed on major exchanges, missing most Solana DeFi tokens. Wallet portfolio endpoints return all token holdings for a given Solana wallet address with current USD values. Nigerian portfolio tracker applications can display a user's entire Solana DeFi portfolio — including LP tokens, staking positions, and long-tail tokens — in a single API call. Birdeye also provides wallet trade history, showing every buy and sell executed from a wallet address with entry prices, exit prices, and P&L calculations. Token Security scoring assesses each token for risk indicators: is the contract renounced or upgradeable? Are there mint authority risks? Is liquidity locked? What is the concentration of top holders? For Nigerian retail investors exploring new token launches on Solana — which can range from legitimate projects to outright scams — this security score is a critical guardrail. Applications surfacing new tokens to Nigerian users should always display the Birdeye security score alongside price data. Trending and new token endpoints surface recently launched tokens and tokens with rapidly increasing trading volume — the data layer for discovery features in trading apps. Liquidity pool data provides TVL, volume, and fee information for any liquidity pool across Solana DEXes. Multi-chain support extends Birdeye's coverage beyond Solana to Ethereum, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Base, and other EVM chains, providing the same token-level price and analytics data for DeFi tokens across ecosystems. The free tier at 100 requests per minute is suitable for development and low-traffic applications, with Starter ($50/month) and Business ($199/month) plans for production-scale Nigerian applications.
Payments
Cross-border payment API for African diaspora remittances and international transfers. Raenest enables developers to integrate cross-border payment capabilities for sending money from anywhere to Africa with competitive rates and fast settlement.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
1Forge is a forex data API that specializes in real-time tick-level currency exchange rates with bid/ask spread data and WebSocket streaming. Unlike basic exchange rate APIs that provide a single mid-rate updated daily or hourly, 1Forge provides the actual bid and ask prices as quoted in the interbank forex market — the same spread-aware pricing that forex brokers and trading platforms use. For Nigerian fintech applications and trading platforms that need to display forex rates with the precision and real-time responsiveness of a live trading environment, 1Forge is one of the most appropriate forex data providers available. Nigeria's forex market is significant and multifaceted. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) sets official exchange rates, while unofficial and parallel market rates often differ substantially. Nigerian forex trading platforms, remittance services, bureau de change operators, and cross-border payment companies all need access to real-time international interbank forex rates as a benchmark — both for pricing and for compliance purposes. 1Forge provides interbank-sourced rates for over 700 currency pairs, including USD/NGN, EUR/NGN, GBP/NGN, and all major cross-currency pairs relevant to Nigerian businesses. The /quotes endpoint is the core data endpoint, returning current bid and ask prices for specified currency pairs. The bid price is what a buyer will pay (the lower price), and the ask price is what a seller receives (the higher price). The spread — the difference between bid and ask — represents market liquidity and transaction cost. For Nigerian forex trading platforms displaying rates to retail traders, providing bid/ask data rather than just a mid-rate gives a more honest representation of the actual cost of a currency transaction. The /convert endpoint accepts an amount, a from-currency, and a to-currency, returning the converted amount at the current rate. This is the simplest integration point for Nigerian applications that need currency conversion — e-commerce platforms displaying prices in multiple currencies, invoice tools converting NGN amounts to USD equivalents, or payment apps showing users the expected exchange at checkout. WebSocket streaming is 1Forge's premium feature for applications requiring continuous real-time rate updates. Instead of polling the REST API every few seconds, the WebSocket connection delivers push notifications whenever a price changes — enabling rate displays that update in real time without polling overhead. For Nigerian live forex rate tickers, remittance cost calculators that show real-time rate changes, and trading platform price feeds, WebSocket streaming provides a significantly better user experience than polling. The /market_status endpoint indicates whether the forex market is currently open or closed. The global forex market operates 24 hours a day on weekdays, but is closed on weekends. For Nigerian applications that display forex rates or accept forex transactions, knowing whether the market is currently active is important context — rates during market hours are live and rapidly changing, while weekend rates may be stale from Friday's close. The free plan provides 1,000 requests per day but limits access to 8 currency pairs — sufficient for prototyping and applications focused on a small number of specific pairs. The Developer plan at $39/month expands to 5,000 requests per day and full pair coverage. The Professional plan at $79/month provides 20,000 requests per day, suitable for higher-traffic Nigerian fintech applications. Enterprise pricing is available for high-frequency or high-volume use cases. 1Forge's API key authentication is straightforward — no request signing required, just include the api_key parameter in REST requests or the WebSocket connection URL. This simplicity makes integration quick for Nigerian developers, with most integrations completable in a few hours of development time.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
CurrencyScoop is a foreign exchange data API that provides developers with real-time and historical exchange rate data for over 168 currencies worldwide, including the Nigerian Naira. Built for fintech developers, e-commerce platforms, and financial applications, CurrencyScoop delivers accurate, up-to-date rates through a simple RESTful API with clear documentation and reliable uptime. The API provides several core endpoints suited to different integration scenarios. The latest rates endpoint returns current exchange rates for all supported currencies relative to a specified base currency, updated throughout the trading day to reflect market movements. This endpoint is the foundation for currency conversion features in payment processors, e-commerce storefronts, and financial calculators. The convert endpoint accepts an amount and currency pair and returns the converted value directly, simplifying client-side implementation for applications that only need conversion functionality rather than rate tables. Historical rates represent one of CurrencyScoop's strongest features. Developers can query exchange rates for any past date going back years, enabling applications that need to calculate the Naira value of historical transactions, compare current rates against past periods, or build time-series visualizations of currency movements. Nigerian accounting and invoicing platforms can use historical rates to accurately record the Naira value of foreign currency transactions at the time they occurred. The time-series endpoint enables querying rates across a date range, returning a day-by-day series of exchange rates. This powers trend charts and analytics features showing how the Naira has moved against major trading currencies like the USD, EUR, GBP, and CNY over weeks, months, or years. For Nigerian financial analysts and import businesses tracking their currency exposure, these trend charts provide valuable context for hedging and procurement timing decisions. Nigerian Naira is fully supported across all CurrencyScoop endpoints, reflecting the service's coverage of all globally traded and many exotic currencies. For Nigerian payment companies, remittance platforms, and e-commerce businesses serving both local and international customers, having accurate NGN rates is non-negotiable. CurrencyScoop sources rates from financial data providers that cover African currencies, ensuring NGN rates reflect current market conditions rather than stale approximations. For e-commerce platforms serving Nigerian consumers who prefer to see prices in familiar Naira terms, CurrencyScoop enables real-time price conversion from USD or EUR product prices to NGN. Given the volatility of the Naira exchange rate in recent years, real-time rates are significantly more accurate than rates hardcoded into the application. This ensures customers always see accurate Naira prices that reflect actual conversion rates they would experience at checkout. Remittance and international money transfer platforms operating in Nigeria use currency APIs like CurrencyScoop to display indicative exchange rates and calculate how much Naira a recipient will receive for a given foreign currency amount. Transparency in exchange rate display is increasingly important for Nigerian remittance customers who compare services based on the rates and fees displayed before initiating a transfer. The API is available through a freemium model with a free plan offering enough requests for development and low-traffic applications. Paid plans scale with request volume to accommodate production applications handling thousands of conversions daily. All plans include access to the same data quality and endpoints; higher tiers simply remove request limits and unlock faster support response times. Integration is designed to be developer-friendly with straightforward authentication using an API key included in request headers or query parameters. The JSON response format is consistent across endpoints, and the documentation includes examples in multiple programming languages. Nigerian developers can typically integrate CurrencyScoop into an existing application in under an hour, making it one of the fastest paths to reliable FX data.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Kraken is one of the world's oldest and most security-focused cryptocurrency exchanges, founded in 2011 and consistently maintaining a strong security record in an industry plagued by exchange hacks. Kraken's API provides REST and WebSocket access for spot trading, futures, margin, and staking across over 200 assets. For Nigerian developers and serious retail or institutional traders who prioritize exchange reliability, regulatory standing, and security track record over the widest possible asset selection, Kraken is a compelling exchange API choice. Nigeria's crypto industry is maturing, and Nigerian institutional investors, OTC desks, and compliance-conscious fintech companies increasingly seek exchange partnerships with credible, regulated counterparties. Kraken holds money transmission licenses in multiple US states and operates under robust regulatory oversight, making it one of the few major exchanges that Nigerian financial institutions can reference in compliance documentation. Nigerian users can register at Kraken with Intermediate verification (name, date of birth, address) to access full spot and staking functionality. The Kraken REST API uses a private endpoint authentication scheme involving an API key, a nonce (ever-increasing integer), and an HMAC-SHA512 signature. This three-element signature scheme is more security-conscious than simpler HMAC-SHA256 implementations used by some exchanges. Kraken's call counter system for rate limiting is unusual: each API call consumes a certain number of counter points, the counter decays over time, and exceeding the limit triggers temporary throttling. Understanding this system is important for Nigerian developers building high-frequency trading tools. Market data endpoints (all public) return ticker data, order book depth (up to 500 levels per side), recent trades, OHLCV candlestick data with multiple timeframes, and tradeable asset information. Kraken's public WebSocket V2 API provides real-time streams for all of these data types, enabling Nigerian applications to maintain live price feeds and order book state without polling. Trading via the private API supports market, limit, stop-loss, take-profit, and trailing stop orders. Advanced features include iceberg orders, post-only limit orders (maker-only), and conditional close orders that automatically trigger a position-closing order when the opening order fills. These sophisticated order types are particularly useful for Nigerian algorithmic traders who want precise execution control. Margin trading allows up to 5x leverage on major pairs. Kraken's margin system charges rollover fees for positions held overnight and requires a minimum margin maintenance level. Nigerian traders using leverage for hedging or speculative positions can manage the entire workflow — opening, monitoring, and closing margin positions — via the API. Kraken Staking allows Nigerian users to stake Ethereum, Polkadot, Solana, Cardano, and 20+ other assets through Kraken's staking service, earning rewards in the staked asset. The staking API returns current staking balances, pending rewards, and reward history. Note that Kraken's on-chain staking service was subject to a settlement with the US SEC in 2023 — the service continued in non-US markets, and Nigerian users are unaffected. Futures trading through Kraken (powered by the Kraken Futures platform, formerly CF Benchmarks) provides perpetual and fixed-maturity futures on BTC, ETH, and other assets with leverage up to 50x. The Futures API has a separate base URL and authentication mechanism from the spot API. For institutional Nigerian traders requiring a Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol connection — the standard connectivity protocol in traditional finance trading systems — Kraken offers a FIX API, one of the few crypto exchanges to do so. This enables Nigerian asset managers and proprietary trading firms to connect to Kraken using the same trading infrastructure they use for traditional market access.
Payments, Banking & Fintech
Allawee Card Issuance API is a Nigerian Banking-as-a-Service platform that enables fintech companies, microfinance institutions, and digital platforms to issue physical and virtual payment cards, create bank accounts, process transfers, and perform credit decisioning through a single API integration. Allawee provides the regulated infrastructure for card issuance and banking operations, allowing partner platforms to offer branded financial products without obtaining independent banking or card scheme licenses. Card issuance is the foundational capability of the Allawee platform. Partner applications can issue Mastercard or Verve physical cards linked to customer accounts through the API, enabling customers of the partner platform to receive a physical payment card they can use at POS terminals, ATMs, and online merchants across Nigeria and globally where the card scheme is accepted. Physical card issuance involves card personalization (embossing customer name and card details), printing, and delivery to customer addresses, all manageable through API calls that initiate the card production and fulfillment workflow. Bank account creation through Allawee enables partner platforms to create functional Nigerian bank accounts for their customers, complete with a NUBAN (Nigerian Uniform Bank Account Number) that is compatible with all Nigerian interbank transfer systems including NIP (NIBSS Instant Payment). Customer accounts created through Allawee can receive inbound transfers from any Nigerian bank and initiate outbound transfers to any Nigerian bank account, providing full interbank connectivity through a single BaaS API integration. Spend controls in the Allawee Card API allow partner platforms to set per-transaction limits, daily spending limits, merchant category restrictions, and geographic restrictions on issued cards. A Nigerian fintech issuing employee expense cards can configure spending controls that prevent cards from being used at non-approved merchant categories. An agricultural platform issuing input finance cards can restrict spending to agricultural input supplier merchant categories, ensuring that financed funds are used for their intended purpose. Credit data decisioning from Allawee leverages transaction history and behavioral patterns on the platform to generate credit scores and lending signals that partner platforms can use for automated loan underwriting decisions. For Nigerian lending platforms that issue cards to their borrowers and want to build repayment history and credit profile data from card usage patterns, Allawee's credit decisioning API provides structured credit signals from the same ecosystem where the lending relationship operates. Tokenization support in the Allawee platform enables issued cards to be added to digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay) by card holders, extending card usability to contactless mobile payments in addition to physical card and online payments. As contactless payment adoption grows among Nigerian consumers particularly in Lagos and other major cities, tokenization support adds a distribution channel for issued cards that increases their day-to-day utility. Dispute management through the Allawee API provides structured workflows for handling card transaction disputes — unauthorized transactions, merchant disputes, technical failures — that partner platforms can initiate programmatically when customers report problems. Automated dispute initiation reduces the manual operational burden of handling customer complaints about card transactions and provides systematic tracking of dispute status and resolution. The CBN regulatory compliance infrastructure behind Allawee means that partner platforms are leveraging a regulated entity's banking and card scheme relationships rather than needing to independently establish CBN licensing, Mastercard or Verve principal membership, and the capital requirements those entail. This significantly lowers the barrier for Nigerian fintechs to add card and banking features to their products, compressing the typical 12-24 month timeline for independent licensing into an API integration that can be completed in days or weeks.
Payments
Miden Banking as a Service API is a sub-Saharan African fintech infrastructure platform that provides card issuance, corporate expense management, virtual accounts, wallet-as-a-service, and multi-country payout capabilities to financial institutions, fintechs, enterprises, and technology companies building embedded payment and financial products across Africa. Miden focuses on the corporate and enterprise financial product space, with particular strength in expense management, corporate card programs, and cross-border payment disbursement. Corporate card issuance is a key Miden capability, enabling partner organizations to issue company expense cards to employees with programmatic spend controls, real-time transaction visibility, and expense categorization. Miden's corporate card infrastructure supports building employee expense management tools where finance teams can see every card transaction in real time, configure per-employee or per-category spending limits, and reconcile expenses automatically without waiting for end-of-month manual reconciliation. For Nigerian companies managing employee expenses across multiple locations and departments, programmatic corporate card management replaces unwieldy petty cash and reimbursement processes. Virtual card issuance through Miden enables platforms to create virtual cards for specific use cases: vendor payment cards with merchant restrictions, single-use purchase cards for procurement, corporate virtual cards for online business expenses, and customer-facing virtual cards for fintech products. Virtual cards are created instantly through the API without physical card production timelines, making them suitable for immediate digital payment needs. NGN and USD accounts provide multi-currency financial infrastructure for Miden partner platforms. Naira accounts enable Nigerian interbank transfers and local payment operations. USD accounts allow platforms to hold dollar balances, make USD-denominated payments, and provide foreign currency account functionality to their customers. The combination of naira and dollar accounts in a single integration supports the multi-currency operational needs of Nigerian businesses engaged in both local and international commerce. Bill payments integration through Miden enables partner platforms to offer airtime top-up, utility bill payment (AEDC, EKEDC, IKEDC, BEDC), cable TV subscriptions (DSTV, GOtv, Startimes), internet data subscriptions, and other Nigerian bill payment categories to their customers. Embedding bill payments into a fintech or banking product increases platform stickiness — customers who pay all their bills through the same app they use for banking are less likely to churn to competing products. Bulk payout operations through Miden enable mass disbursement to bank accounts and mobile money wallets across multiple African countries. For Nigerian logistics companies, gig economy platforms, agricultural aggregators, and marketplace operators that need to pay large numbers of individuals across Nigeria and neighboring markets, Miden's bulk payout API provides the disbursement infrastructure to process hundreds or thousands of individual payouts efficiently in a single operation. Wallet as a Service capabilities allow partner platforms to create digital wallets for their customers — stored value accounts that can receive deposits, make payments, and earn rewards — without the complexity of building wallet infrastructure independently. For Nigerian platforms wanting to add a loyalty or savings wallet feature to their product suite, Miden's Wallet as a Service provides the backend for wallet account management, balance tracking, and transaction processing. Mobile money payout support extends Miden's disbursement coverage to mobile money wallet recipients in markets where mobile money is the primary financial access tool — particularly relevant for cross-border payouts to recipients in Ghana (MTN Mobile Money, Vodafone Cash), Kenya (M-Pesa), and other African markets where mobile money is more prevalent than bank accounts. This multi-rail payout coverage enables Nigerian platforms reaching pan-African beneficiary populations to make payouts regardless of whether recipients have bank accounts.
Trading & Currency Exchange
iTick is a West African financial technology platform providing real-time market data, trading tools, and investment insights. The iTick API enables developers to integrate African stock market data, price feeds, and trading functionality into financial applications. Nigerian traders and investment platforms use iTick API to access real-time Nigerian stock market data, watchlists, and order execution capabilities.
Development Tools, Payments
AZA Finance is a pan-African payments and foreign exchange infrastructure company that enables businesses and fintechs to send, receive, and convert money across Africa and globally through a single API. Originally founded as BitPesa in Nairobi in 2013, AZA Finance has evolved into one of Africa's most established cross-border payment platforms, holding regulatory licenses from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Bank of Uganda — a rare multi-jurisdictional licensing achievement in African fintech. What the API Does The AZA Finance API, documented at docs.azafinance.com and accessed via the developer portal at developers.transferzero.com, enables developers to programmatically initiate and manage cross-border payments across 30+ currencies and 115+ markets. Core capabilities include: sending payouts to bank accounts, mobile money wallets (M-Pesa, MTN Mobile Money, Airtel), and cash pickup points; real-time FX conversion between African and major global currencies; bulk payment processing for high-volume disbursements; account validation before sending; and webhook callbacks for real-time transaction status updates. How Developers Use It Developers integrate by creating an account at developers.transferzero.com. Authentication is via API Key and Secret issued from the portal. AZA Finance provides official SDKs for .NET, Java, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby, significantly reducing integration time. The typical flow involves: creating a sender (KYC-verified entity), creating recipients (beneficiaries with bank or wallet details), initiating a transaction specifying corridors and currencies, and listening for webhook callbacks for status updates (pending, processing, paid, cancelled). The API supports test transactions in sandbox mode before going live. Supported Currencies and Countries AZA Finance supports 30+ currencies including NGN (Nigeria), GHS (Ghana), KES (Kenya), UGX (Uganda), TZS (Tanzania), ZAR (South Africa), XOF/XAF (CFA franc zones), MZN (Mozambique), USD, EUR, GBP, AED, CNY, and more. Nigeria is fully supported with CBN licensing in place. Pricing AZA Finance does not publish a public fee schedule. Pricing is determined by enterprise contract and depends on volume, corridor, and currency pair. The FX spread is embedded in the exchange rate offered. There is no self-serve free tier — you must contact their sales team to negotiate a contract. A sandbox environment is available for technical integration and testing at no cost. Authentication API authentication uses a Key + Secret pair obtained from the developer portal at developers.transferzero.com. Requests are signed with the secret to create an authorization header. The portal also supports role-based access controls for team members. Rate Limits AZA Finance operates on enterprise SLAs. Specific rate limit figures are not published publicly — they are determined by agreement. The platform maintains a 99.5% uptime guarantee. Compliance and Regulations AZA Finance is licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria, making it one of the few Africa-focused payment APIs with direct CBN authorization. It also holds FCA authorization in the UK and Bank of Uganda licensing. The platform is PCI-DSS compliant and certified to ISO27001:2022 for information security management. All transactions undergo AML screening and compliance monitoring 24/7. Challenges and Gotchas Key limitations for Nigerian developers: (1) AZA Finance is B2B only — it is not designed for consumer checkout flows. (2) Pricing is opaque — you cannot estimate costs without contacting sales. (3) KYC onboarding can be lengthy for enterprise clients. (4) The developer portal still uses "TransferZero" branding from the previous product name — this can confuse developers unfamiliar with the company history. (5) No USSD or card payment support — AZA Finance is purely for push-payment corridors. Company Background AZA Finance was founded in 2013 as BitPesa, a Bitcoin-based remittance platform for Kenya. It later pivoted away from crypto, rebranded as TransferZero, and finally as AZA Finance in 2020. The company is headquartered in Nairobi with offices in Lagos, London, Madrid, Luxembourg, and Dakar. It has processed over $3 billion in transactions and serves major clients including global remittance firms and banks. FAQs Q: Can a Nigerian startup use AZA Finance without CBN licensing? A: Yes. AZA Finance holds the CBN license on your behalf — you access their infrastructure without needing your own license. However, you must sign a partner agreement and pass their KYC checks. Q: Is there a sandbox for testing? A: Yes. Developers can test at developers.transferzero.com in sandbox mode before production. Q: Does AZA Finance support NGN? A: Yes. Nigerian Naira (NGN) is a core supported currency with payouts to all major Nigerian banks. Q: Is AZA Finance suitable for consumer apps? A: No. AZA Finance is built for B2B use — enterprises, fintechs, and money transfer operators. It does not offer a consumer-facing checkout widget or SDK.
Payments
PayVessel Payments and Virtual Cards API is a Nigerian fintech infrastructure platform that provides a unified API covering payment collection, bank transfers, virtual accounts, virtual card issuance, identity verification, and credit scoring for Nigerian digital businesses. PayVessel consolidates multiple fintech building blocks into a single integration, enabling Nigerian startups and platforms to launch with comprehensive payment and financial infrastructure without stitching together multiple separate providers. Payment collection through PayVessel supports the primary Nigerian payment methods: card payments (Visa, Mastercard, Verve), bank transfers via virtual accounts, and mobile wallet payments. Merchants and platforms integrated with PayVessel can accept payments from Nigerian customers through any of these channels from a single API integration, ensuring that customers can pay using whichever method is most convenient or available to them without the merchant maintaining multiple payment gateway integrations. Dynamic virtual accounts are a core feature of PayVessel's collection infrastructure. A dynamic virtual account is a unique bank account number generated on demand for a specific payment transaction. When a customer is shown a dynamic virtual account number at checkout, any transfer made to that account number within a defined time window is matched to the specific transaction and triggers payment confirmation. Dynamic accounts solve the reconciliation problem of bank transfers — traditionally, matching a transfer received from an unknown sender to a specific order required manual matching; dynamic accounts automate this matching completely. Virtual USD cards issued through PayVessel enable Nigerian platform users to make USD-denominated online purchases, pay for international subscriptions, and receive USD payments through a virtual card with a US Mastercard number. For Nigerian users who need to access global digital services — cloud computing platforms, international software subscriptions, overseas supplier payments — a virtual USD card provides access without requiring a traditional domiciliary account or the foreign exchange procurement challenges associated with it. BVN (Bank Verification Number) verification through PayVessel enables platforms to verify that a customer's provided name and BVN match the records in the NIBSS database, confirming identity and banking status. NIN (National Identification Number) verification similarly validates identity against the NIMC database. For Nigerian lending platforms, savings apps, and investment platforms with regulatory Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, BVN and NIN verification through PayVessel provides the identity confirmation layer needed for onboarding compliance. Credit scoring capabilities within PayVessel derive risk signals from customer transaction patterns, bank verification data, and behavioral indicators to produce credit scores that lending platforms can use for automated underwriting decisions. For Nigerian platforms offering buy-now-pay-later, micro-loans, or salary advances, an embedded credit scoring signal reduces the reliance on subjective human judgment in loan decisions and enables faster, more consistent approval workflows. Bulk transfer capabilities allow platforms to initiate large numbers of individual bank transfers in a single API request, enabling mass disbursement of funds — salary payments, affiliate commissions, vendor settlements, refund processing — without making individual API calls for each recipient. Nigerian HR platforms, marketplace operators, and financial services businesses that disburse to thousands of recipients regularly use bulk transfer APIs to complete disbursement cycles in minutes rather than hours of individual transaction processing. PayVessel provides a sandbox test environment where developers can simulate all API operations with test credentials before going live. The test environment produces realistic responses for successful and failed transaction scenarios, enabling thorough integration testing that validates edge case handling without affecting real bank accounts or processing real money during development.
Utility Tools, Payments
Nigerian VTU platform providing unified API for airtime, data, cable subscriptions, and electricity bills. VTUGate specializes in high reliability through integration with multiple VTU providers as backup. Single API integration connects to multiple providers ensuring uptime and redundancy. Covers all major Nigerian networks and service providers.
Payments, Development Tools
Nium is a Singapore-headquartered global payments infrastructure company that provides businesses with a unified API to send payments to 190+ countries, collect payments in 35+ markets, and issue physical and virtual cards in 30+ countries. Nium is a licensed financial institution in multiple jurisdictions including the US, UK, EU, Singapore, and Australia, and serves financial institutions, fintech companies, banks, and enterprises that need to build or scale cross-border payment capabilities. The Nium API is RESTful with JSON payloads. Documentation is at docs.nium.com. Authentication uses API Key credentials passed in request headers (client-id and x-api-key). Nium operates a payout platform (mpdocs.nium.com) that provides the most detailed technical integration guidance for developers building payment products. For payouts, Nium supports 190+ destination countries with 65 of those available in real-time. The supported corridors span the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, and Asia-Pacific. Nigeria falls within Nium's Africa coverage — however, the exact payment methods, corridors, and processing times for Nigeria should be confirmed via the Nium Playbook at playbook.nium.com before integration. Payout fees are calculated in real-time at transaction execution and are corridor-specific. For collections, Nium supports receiving payments in 35+ markets using local payment methods. This covers bank transfers, card payments, and local e-wallets depending on the market. Nigeria-specific collection support should be confirmed separately. Nium also offers card issuance APIs in 30+ countries — enabling fintechs and banks to issue virtual and physical Visa/Mastercard cards to their customers. Cards can be issued in multiple currencies and managed programmatically (freeze, unfreeze, set spending limits, retrieve transactions). Webhooks are available for all major events: payout processing, payout completion, payout failure, and card transaction alerts. Developers can configure webhook endpoints during Nium account setup. The sandbox environment provides full testing capability for all Nium products. Moving to live requires completing Nium's enterprise onboarding, including business verification and compliance review by a Nium account manager. From a compliance standpoint, Nium is regulated in multiple jurisdictions globally. The company holds money transmitter licenses in all US states, FCA authorization in the UK, Payments Institution license in the EU, and MAS Major Payment Institution license in Singapore. For transactions to/from Nigeria, Nium routes through local correspondent partners that are CBN-licensed. Nium raised $200 million at a $2.1 billion valuation in 2022, making it one of the most well-capitalized global payment infrastructure companies. Clients include large banks, digital banks, travel companies, and enterprise platforms globally. Frequently Asked Questions: Is Nigeria a supported payout destination on Nium? Nium covers 190+ countries including African markets. Nigeria is likely included, but specific corridor availability and payment methods should be confirmed via the Nium Playbook at playbook.nium.com or by contacting your Nium account manager. Does Nium support NGN as a settlement currency? This should be confirmed during Nium onboarding. Nium typically settles in the destination country's local currency. Is Nium self-service or enterprise? Nium is primarily enterprise — access requires working with a Nium account manager. It is not a self-service sign-up API like Paystack or Stripe. Nium's card issuance capability in 30+ countries allows platforms to issue Visa or Mastercard branded cards to their customers in multiple markets from a single API integration. For Nigerian fintechs building pan-African or global financial products, Nium's card issuance infrastructure provides the card product layer alongside payout and collection capabilities, enabling a more complete financial product stack without multiple card program relationships. Nium's treasury management features allow platforms to hold multi-currency balances, execute FX conversions between 35+ currencies at competitive rates, and manage currency exposure across the markets they operate in. For Nigerian platforms managing collections in multiple currencies and disbursements in NGN or other African currencies, centralized multi-currency treasury management through Nium reduces FX conversion costs and the operational complexity of managing multiple currency accounts across different banking relationships.
Development Tools, Payments
Nigerian payment gateway and VTU (airtime/data) platform API for merchants and resellers. Provides payment processing, bill payments, and mobile top-up services. Legacy platform with stable but limited recent API development activity.
Payments
Mainstack is a Nigerian fintech platform providing embedded payments, business tools, and payout APIs for entrepreneurs and SMEs. The Mainstack API enables payment processing, fund management, and business automation. Nigerian entrepreneurs, creators, and SMEs use Mainstack to accept payments, manage funds, and access embedded finance.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Naira Exchange Rates API is a free, open-source exchange rate data service specifically focused on the Nigerian naira (NGN), aggregating exchange rates from multiple Nigerian rate sources into a single API endpoint: official CBN rates, bureau de change (BDC) market rates, commercial bank buying and selling rates, and remittance provider rates from services like Western Union and MoneyGram. For Nigerian fintech applications, personal finance tools, and comparison platforms that need to display, compare, or analyze multiple simultaneous NGN exchange rate sources, this API provides more comprehensive naira rate coverage than any single official or commercial source alone. The multi-source rate aggregation is the defining feature of the Naira Exchange Rates API. Unlike exchange rate APIs that provide only one rate per currency pair, this dataset provides the rate landscape: the official CBN rate (what the central bank says the rate is), the bank rates (what commercial banks offer their customers for buying and selling foreign currency), the bureau de change rate (the market rate available at licensed forex dealers across Nigeria), and the remittance rates (what money transfer operators pay Nigerian recipients). This multi-source view is exactly what Nigerian consumers and financial comparison platforms need to make informed decisions about where to exchange or receive foreign currency. The divergence between these rate sources is often significant in the Nigerian context. When the naira experiences volatility or when there is a gap between the official rate and the market rate, the CBN rate, BDC rate, and bank rate may differ substantially. For example, during periods of naira pressure, bureau de change rates may be significantly above the official CBN rate, while bank rates fall between these extremes. The Naira Exchange Rates API captures all these rates simultaneously, allowing Nigerian apps to show users the rate gap and help them understand the full picture of NGN exchange rates. Remittance rate comparison is a high-value feature enabled by this API. Millions of Nigerians receive money from family members abroad through services including Western Union, MoneyGram, Ria, WorldRemit, and others. The effective NGN amount received varies significantly between these services due to different exchange rates and fee structures. Nigerian diaspora-facing apps that help senders find the best rate for sending money home can use the Naira Exchange Rates API to pull current remittance provider NGN rates and display a comparison — showing users which service gives Nigerian recipients the most naira per dollar or pound sent. Historical naira exchange rate data from this API enables tracking the naira's performance over time against the US dollar, British pound, Euro, and other currencies. Nigerian personal finance apps that help users understand how their naira savings or dollar-denominated assets are performing can use historical rate data to plot naira depreciation charts, calculate real-terms purchasing power changes, and provide context for users making savings and investment decisions in the Nigerian FX environment. API access uses a token-based authentication system with a free API token obtained through registration on the platform. The free token provides access to current and historical rate data without payment, making this API accessible to all Nigerian developers regardless of budget. The project is maintained as an open-source initiative, meaning the community can contribute improvements and the source of the rate aggregation logic is transparent. Integration follows standard REST API patterns — HTTP GET requests with the API token and desired currency pair as parameters, returning JSON responses with rate values from each source. Nigerian developers can integrate the Naira Exchange Rates API into a web or mobile application in hours, giving their users immediate access to the comprehensive Nigerian rate landscape.
Development Tools, Blockchain, Trading & Currency Exchange
Binance API provides programmatic access to the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, covering market data, spot trading, futures trading, margin trading, and account management. The Binance API is comprehensive and well-documented, with REST endpoints for all trading operations and WebSocket streams for real-time order book updates, trade feeds, and account notifications. For developers building trading bots, portfolio trackers, and crypto market data tools, Binance is often the primary exchange to integrate given its unmatched liquidity and the breadth of listed trading pairs. However, Nigerian developers and users should be clearly aware of an important service restriction: Binance.com suspended its services for Nigerian users in 2024 following regulatory and compliance disputes. Nigerian residents cannot create new accounts on Binance.com, and Nigerian users who previously held accounts face restrictions on deposits, withdrawals, and trading. This makes Binance.com effectively unavailable for Nigerian end users. The Binance API is listed here for completeness and for developers building applications for non-Nigerian markets, but Nigerian-focused applications should not depend on Binance.com as a platform for their Nigerian users. For developers outside Nigeria, or for Nigerian developers building tools for international users, the Binance API covers the full range of exchange functionality. The market data endpoints are publicly accessible without authentication — any developer can query current prices, order book depth, recent trades, 24-hour statistics, and OHLCV candlestick data for any of Binance's hundreds of trading pairs without an API key. This public market data layer is commonly used by price aggregators, portfolio trackers, and market analysis tools. The REST API uses a weight-based rate limiting system where different endpoints consume different amounts of "weight" from a per-minute budget. Lightweight endpoints like price queries consume 1 weight, while heavier endpoints like full order book snapshots consume more. The default limit is 1,200 weight per minute per IP, which is generous for most applications. Trading endpoints additionally have per-account order rate limits. WebSocket streams provide real-time data: individual symbol trade streams, order book depth updates (full snapshots and incremental updates), candlestick streams, and account-level streams for order updates and balance changes. For algorithmic trading systems, WebSocket streams are essential for maintaining a real-time view of market state without polling overhead. Trading operations via authenticated API endpoints cover the full lifecycle: placing market, limit, stop-loss, and take-profit orders; querying open orders; cancelling orders; and retrieving order history. Futures trading on Binance USD-M and COIN-M futures markets is accessible through separate API endpoints with similar authentication and structure. The Binance Testnet (testnet.binance.vision) provides a sandbox environment for testing trading bot logic without risking real funds. Test funds are available from the testnet faucet, and the testnet API behaves identically to production for most operations. For Nigerian developers who need a similar exchange API for applications targeting Nigerian users, alternatives include Coinbase Advanced Trade API (for US-compliant markets), Kraken API, or Nigerian-local exchanges such as Busha Commerce API — all of which are listed separately in this directory and serve users in Nigeria without the geographic restrictions applicable to Binance.com.
Banking & Fintech, Payments
eTranzact International Plc is one of Nigeria's oldest and most established fintech companies, listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). Founded in 2003, eTranzact has been a foundational player in Nigeria's digital payments ecosystem — predating Paystack, Flutterwave, and most modern Nigerian payment gateways by over a decade. The company offers a suite of enterprise API products designed for banks, telcos, financial institutions, and government agencies. Developer documentation is available at developers.etranzactng.com. What the API Does eTranzact offers six primary API products: (1) SwitchIT — a bill payment API for utility, airtime, and service payments; (2) Virtual Account Service — for issuing and managing virtual bank account numbers; (3) AntPeer — loan mandate setup and automated repayment collection for digital lenders; (4) Instant Transfer — real-time interbank fund transfers via NIP; (5) e-Invoicing API — generating FIRS-compliant electronic invoices for tax compliance; (6) WaaS (Wallet-as-a-Service) — embedding wallet functionality into third-party applications. How Developers Use It Developers access the portal at developers.etranzactng.com for documentation and API reference. Authentication is via API key from the developer portal. eTranzact is an enterprise provider — onboarding typically requires a formal integration agreement rather than self-service signup. A sandbox environment is available for testing. Pricing Enterprise pricing only — not publicly listed. eTranzact targets institutional clients with contracts negotiated based on integration type, transaction volume, and product combination. Contact eTranzact for pricing. Compliance eTranzact is CBN-licensed and operates under CBN payment system regulations. As an NSE-listed company, it is subject to SEC regulations and public reporting requirements — providing institutional clients with a high level of corporate accountability and transparency. Challenges and Gotchas (1) Not a self-service platform — enterprise onboarding required. (2) Documentation is less accessible than Paystack or Flutterwave. (3) Primarily institutional focus — not designed for individual developers or small startups. (4) Pricing requires sales engagement. (5) Product suite is broad but each product may require a separate integration agreement. Company Background eTranzact International Plc was incorporated in 2003 and is headquartered in Lagos. It is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and serves over 200+ banks and financial institutions across Nigeria and Africa. The company has expanded into Ghana, Zimbabwe, and other African markets. Its longevity and stock exchange listing make it one of the most trusted institutional payment infrastructure providers in Nigeria. FAQs Q: Is eTranzact publicly listed? A: Yes. eTranzact International Plc is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Q: Can a startup integrate eTranzact independently? A: eTranzact is primarily enterprise-focused. Small startups should consider Paystack or Flutterwave as more accessible alternatives. Q: Does eTranzact support loan mandate processing? A: Yes. The AntPeer product handles loan mandate setup and automated repayment debit for digital lenders and microfinance banks. Q: What is WaaS? A: Wallet-as-a-Service — an API that lets third-party apps embed NGN wallet functionality without building their own wallet infrastructure. For Nigerian enterprises and large organizations, eTranzact's position as a publicly listed company on the Nigerian Stock Exchange provides a level of transparency and financial accountability that private fintech providers cannot match. Annual financial reports, board governance, and shareholder accountability create institutional confidence for Nigerian banks, government agencies, and large corporations selecting payment infrastructure partners for critical financial operations. NIBSS NIP integration through eTranzact enables real-time instant payment transfers between Nigerian bank accounts, settled within seconds. For enterprises running high-value payment operations — salary disbursements, vendor settlements, inter-company transfers — access to the NIP instant payment rail through eTranzact's regulated infrastructure ensures funds reach recipients immediately rather than in batch settlement windows. eTranzact's long-standing position as a NIBSS-licensed institution provides direct connectivity to Nigeria's core payment clearing infrastructure. The PTSA (Payment Terminal Service Aggregator) license held by eTranzact allows the company to aggregate POS terminal services and provide terminal deployment, management, and transaction routing for merchants. Nigerian businesses deploying POS infrastructure — retail chains, hotels, supermarkets, service businesses — can use eTranzact as their PTSA for terminal provisioning and ongoing support. This physical payment infrastructure layer complements eTranzact's digital API services for businesses managing both in-person and online payment channels.
Blockchain, Trading & Currency Exchange
Monierate is a Nigerian-built exchange rate aggregation platform and API that solves a uniquely Nigerian problem: the existence of multiple, often dramatically different, NGN exchange rate markets operating simultaneously. Unlike global exchange rate APIs (ExchangeRate-API, CurrencyLayer, Currencyapi) that only provide official mid-market rates, Monierate tracks and aggregates three distinct types of Nigerian Naira exchange rates — Official CBN rates, Midmarket rates, and Black Market (parallel market) rates — from over 40 Nigerian exchanges, Bureau de Change operators, banks, and cryptocurrency platforms. This multi-source, multi-market approach makes Monierate the most Nigeria-relevant exchange rate data source available, and the only API on the market specifically designed around the reality of Nigeria's dual exchange rate system. **Why Nigeria Needs a Dedicated FX API** Nigeria's foreign exchange market is uniquely complex. For extended periods, the country has operated a dual exchange rate system where the official CBN rate differs significantly from the rate available in the parallel market (also called the "black market" or "street rate"). This gap has at times exceeded 50–100% — meaning a developer using an international exchange rate API that only provides the official rate would be presenting rates that Nigerian consumers and informal businesses do not actually transact at. For Nigerian fintech apps, remittance platforms, crypto exchanges, and financial media that serve real users in Nigeria, the parallel market rate is often more relevant than the official rate. Monierate is built specifically to address this gap. **What Monierate Provides** The Monierate API aggregates NGN exchange rate data from 40+ sources and provides: 1. **Official CBN Rates**: The Central Bank of Nigeria's official exchange rates — the rate used for official transactions, government imports, and regulated financial institutions. 2. **Midmarket Rates**: The average market rate between buy and sell prices across major providers — a middle-ground figure useful for general currency conversion displays. 3. **Parallel Market (Black Market) Rates**: The street rates available through Bureau de Change operators and informal channels — reflecting what Nigerian individuals and businesses actually transact at when official channels are unavailable or uncompetitive. 4. **Crypto Exchange Rates**: NGN prices from major crypto exchanges including Binance and Bybit — enabling apps to display Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT values in Naira at current exchange platform rates. **40+ Source Aggregation** Monierate continuously monitors exchange rates from over 40 Nigerian and international providers including: CBN (Central Bank), commercial banks, Bureau de Change operators, crypto exchanges (Binance, Bybit), remittance services, and financial platforms. This aggregation gives developers access to rate comparison data across providers — not just a single rate but a full market picture. **API Authentication & Access** Monierate requires an account signup to access the API, even on the free plan. Account creation is done at monierate.com/api and requires only an email address — no KYC or business verification. An API key is issued upon signup. Developers pass this key in their API requests to authenticate. **Pricing** Monierate offers a free plan with standard rate limits suitable for development and low-traffic applications. Paid plans with higher rate limits are available for production-scale usage. Specific pricing tiers and request volumes require account registration to view. Rate limiting is enforced at the plan level, not per request. **Use Cases in Nigerian Context** Monierate is the data source of choice for any Nigerian application where accuracy of the real-world exchange rate matters: - Remittance comparison tools showing which service gives the best NGN rate - P2P crypto platforms displaying USDT/NGN and BTC/NGN rates - Financial news sites embedding live Naira rate widgets - Treasury management tools monitoring official vs. parallel rate spreads - Travel apps showing travelers what to expect at Lagos Bureau de Change desks - Import/export businesses calculating true FX costs beyond official rates **Comparison with Global FX APIs** While ExchangeRate-API, CurrencyLayer, and Currencyapi provide official mid-market NGN rates that may be accurate for international financial reporting, they are insufficient for building consumer-facing Nigerian financial apps where users experience the parallel market daily. Monierate fills this gap by providing the data that represents how Nigerian users actually experience exchange rates. **Company Background** Monierate was built by Nigerian developers to solve the local FX data problem. The platform operates as both a consumer-facing website (monierate.com) where Nigerians can track live rates and compare providers, and as an API service for developers who want to embed those rates into their own applications. **Frequently Asked Questions** Q: What makes Monierate different from ExchangeRate-API? A: Monierate provides Nigerian parallel market and black market NGN rates — which no global exchange rate API includes. ExchangeRate-API only provides official mid-market rates. Q: Do I need to pay to use the Monierate API? A: A free plan is available with email signup. Paid plans provide higher rate limits for production use. Q: Does Monierate support non-NGN currency pairs? A: Monierate is focused on Nigerian Naira (NGN) exchange rates. For multi-currency pairs not involving NGN, use a global exchange rate API. Q: Does it include crypto rates? A: Yes. Monierate tracks NGN prices on Binance, Bybit, and other crypto exchanges. Q: How many sources does Monierate aggregate? A: Over 40 Nigerian exchanges, BDCs, banks, crypto platforms, and remittance services.
Payments, Development Tools
OPay is a Nigerian digital financial services company and CBN-licensed Payment Service Bank that provides payment gateway APIs for businesses to accept online and offline payments. Originally founded as Opera Pay, OPay has grown into one of Nigeria's largest fintech platforms, backed by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Sequoia Capital China, and other major investors. OPay operates the largest mobile money network in Nigeria with over 40 million registered users and hundreds of thousands of agents — making it unique among Nigerian payment gateways in that its checkout is also deeply integrated with a mass-market e-wallet used daily by tens of millions of Nigerians. The OPay Checkout API is a RESTful, PCI-compliant payment gateway that enables businesses to accept multiple payment methods through a single integration. Developers access the API documentation at doc.opaycheckout.com, which provides both a hosted Express Checkout option (where OPay handles the entire payment UI) and a Server-to-Server API option (where developers build their own payment UI and call OPay endpoints directly for full control over the customer experience). Authentication uses AppId and AppKey credentials from the OPay Business Dashboard. Requests are signed using HMAC for security. The AppId is passed in the request header, and the AppKey is used to generate a signature that validates the integrity of each API call. The Business Dashboard is also used to configure webhook URLs and IP whitelisting — both of which are required for production deployments. OPay supports the following payment channels for Nigeria: local debit card payments (3DS and non-3DS), bank transfer checkout (where customers receive a virtual account number to transfer to), USSD payments, bank account direct debit, and OPay e-wallet QR payments. The e-wallet QR channel is uniquely powerful — customers with the OPay app can scan a QR code to pay directly from their OPay wallet, and the cost to the merchant is just ₦5 per transfer (the lowest payout rate in the Nigerian market). On the pricing side, OPay charges 1.5% per local transaction capped at ₦2,000 — identical to Paystack and Monnify. International card transactions are charged at 4% with no cap. For payouts (transfers out), OPay wallet transfers cost ₦5 flat, while bank transfers to other Nigerian banks follow the industry standard: ₦10 for amounts up to ₦5,000, ₦25 for ₦5,001–₦50,000, and ₦50 above ₦50,000. Volume discount pricing is available for large-volume processors upon request. OPay also provides a WooCommerce plugin for WordPress-based e-commerce stores, enabling non-technical merchants to add OPay checkout without writing any code. A PHP SDK is also available for backend developers. Webhook notifications are available for payment confirmation events. Developers must configure webhook endpoints in the dashboard and validate webhook signatures to prevent fraudulent event injection. OPay's sandbox environment allows full testing of all payment channels before going live. Moving to live requires completing OPay's business onboarding including CBN KYC: CAC registration, director BVN and government ID, and a business bank account. From a compliance standpoint, OPay Digital Services Limited is CBN-licensed as a Payment Service Bank and operates under the Payment Service Bank (PSB) regulatory framework. All card data is processed in compliance with PCI-DSS. The OPay e-wallet is NDIC-insured up to ₦500,000. Known challenges: OPay's developer documentation is less comprehensive than Paystack's. Some advanced features (split payments, recurring billing) are not available. The e-wallet QR payment channel requires customers to have the OPay app installed, which is only relevant for merchants targeting OPay's user base. Frequently Asked Questions: How is OPay different from Paystack? OPay's main differentiator is the integration with its 40M+ user e-wallet for ₦5 QR payments. For developers building for OPay's mass-market user base, this is a significant advantage. For general e-commerce, Paystack has better documentation and more developer features. Does OPay support split payments or subscriptions? No — OPay's checkout API does not currently support split payments or recurring subscription billing. What is the OPay wallet QR payment? It allows merchants to display a QR code that customers with the OPay app can scan to pay directly from their OPay wallet at ₦5 per transaction.
Payments, Banking & Fintech, Development Tools
GTPay is the online payment gateway from Guaranty Trust Bank (now Guaranty Trust Holding Company — GTCo), one of Nigeria's largest and most recognized tier-1 banks. GTPay enables Nigerian merchants to accept card payments online from customers using Interswitch (Verve), Visa, and Mastercard — both locally issued and international cards. The gateway is backed by GTBank's banking infrastructure and has been serving Nigerian e-commerce merchants since the early days of online payments in Nigeria. What GTPay Does GTPay processes card-present-not-required (CNP) transactions for online merchants, collecting payment from customers and settling into the merchant's GTBank business account. The gateway supports NGN (currency code 566) and USD (currency code 840) transactions, making it usable for both local NGN e-commerce and international USD billing. How Developers Use It Developers obtain a Merchant ID and Hash Key by physically visiting any GTBank branch nationwide and registering as a GTPay merchant. After registration, integration is done using the technical parameters documented at ibank.gtbank.com/gtpay/IntegrationAPI/mman-tech.html. Key parameters include: gtpay_mert_id (merchant identifier), gtpay_tranx_id (unique transaction ID from merchant), gtpay_tranx_amt (amount in kobo or cents), and gtpay_tranx_curr (ISO currency code — 566 for NGN, 840 for USD). The Hash Key is used to generate a transaction hash for request signing. Pricing Local card transactions: 1.5% fee capped at ₦2,000. Contact GTBank for the full fee schedule including international card rates. Authentication Merchant ID and Hash Key pair obtained from GTBank branch. Transactions are signed using the Hash Key to generate a security hash that GTBank validates before processing. Compliance GTPay is operated by Guaranty Trust Bank (CBN-licensed), ensuring full CBN compliance for all payment processing. PCI DSS compliant for card data handling. Important Note on Legacy Status GTCo (formerly GTBank) has since launched Squad (squadco.com) as their modern, developer-first payment platform under HabariPay Limited. Squad offers a comprehensive REST API with sandbox, webhooks, virtual accounts, and full documentation. For new integrations, Squad is the recommended modern alternative to GTPay. GTPay remains operational for existing merchants. Challenges and Gotchas (1) Merchant registration requires a physical GTBank branch visit — not self-serve online. (2) GTPay is a legacy product — documentation is older and less comprehensive than modern gateways. (3) No bank transfer, USSD, or recurring billing support. (4) Integration is form-post based rather than modern REST JSON API. (5) New projects should seriously consider Squad (HabariPay) instead. FAQs Q: How do I get a GTPay Merchant ID? A: Visit any GTBank branch nationwide with your business documents to register as a GTPay merchant. Q: Is GTPay still active? A: Yes, GTPay remains operational for existing merchants but GTCo's newer platform Squad is the recommended modern alternative. Q: Does GTPay support USSD or bank transfer? A: No. GTPay only supports card payments (Interswitch/Verve, Visa, Mastercard). Q: What currencies does GTPay support? A: NGN (566) and USD (840). GTPay's backing by Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) — consistently ranked among Nigeria's top tier-1 banks — provides GTPay merchants with the financial security and institutional credibility that bank-affiliated payment infrastructure carries. For Nigerian businesses where their payment gateway provider's financial stability is a selection criterion — particularly for merchants holding float or awaiting settlement — a bank-affiliated gateway provides assurance that is difficult for independent fintech providers to match. The settlement process for GTPay transactions credits merchant accounts within GTBank's settlement cycle, with same-day or next-day settlement available for GTPay merchants who also hold GTBank business accounts. This tight integration between payment gateway and bank account reduces settlement float and simplifies reconciliation for merchants whose primary banking relationship is with GTBank, one of the largest retail and commercial banking relationships in Nigeria.
Payments, Development Tools
CBI Monie is a Nigerian payment infrastructure platform operated by CBI Technologies Limited. The company is licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), ISO-certified, NDPR-compliant, and PCI-DSS certified — making it one of the compliance-ready options for Nigerian businesses and fintechs needing embedded payment capabilities. CBI Monie offers multi-channel payment acceptance including POS terminals, dynamic QR codes, virtual account numbers, payment links, and a developer API for programmatic integration. What the API Does The CBI Monie API provides RESTful endpoints for: wallet balance and transaction management; QR code and virtual account generation; merchant onboarding for agent networks; payment links and checkout sessions; and real-time webhook events for automated workflows. The API is designed for fintechs, ERP systems, government platforms, and agent network operators that need to embed payment infrastructure into their products. How Developers Use It API access is by request — developers contact support@cbitechnologiesltd.com to initiate onboarding. Once approved, API credentials are issued. The platform provides SDKs and webhook integration modules. A sandbox environment is available for safe testing of transactions and webhook events before going live. The API follows RESTful conventions. Pricing Not publicly listed. CBI Monie pricing is available upon request through their sales and support team at support@cbitechnologiesltd.com. There is also a dedicated pricing page at cbimonie.com/pricing for merchant plans. Compliance CBN-licensed, ISO-certified, NDPR-compliant (Nigeria Data Protection Regulation), and PCI-DSS certified. CBI Monie handles cardholder data in compliance with international payment security standards. All merchant and API partner onboarding includes KYC verification. Supported Payment Channels POS terminals (physical card-present), dynamic QR codes, virtual account numbers (NIP transfers), payment links and hosted checkout, and web/mobile integration via API. Challenges and Gotchas (1) API access is not self-serve — requires approval and manual onboarding. (2) No USSD payment support. (3) No crypto or cross-border payment capabilities. (4) Rate limits and detailed technical specs are not publicly documented. (5) Compared to Paystack or Flutterwave, documentation is less comprehensive and publicly accessible. Company Background CBI Monie is a product of CBI Technologies Limited, a Nigerian fintech infrastructure company. The platform targets enterprise and institutional clients including government agencies, large merchants, fintechs building on top of their rails, and agent network operators who need a compliant multi-channel payment stack. FAQs Q: How do I get API access? A: Contact support@cbitechnologiesltd.com to request API access. Access is not self-serve. Q: Is there a sandbox? A: Yes. CBI Monie provides a developer-safe sandbox for testing transactions and webhooks. Q: Is CBI Monie suitable for a consumer app? A: Yes, through the wallet and virtual account APIs. It is also well-suited for B2B and enterprise platforms. Q: Does CBI Monie accept international cards? A: Yes. POS and card acceptance includes Verve, Visa, and Mastercard. Q: Can CBI Monie handle agent network onboarding? A: Yes. The Merchant Onboarding API is specifically designed for programmatically onboarding agents at scale. The PCI DSS certification of CBI Monie ensures that card data processed through the platform meets the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard requirements for cardholder data protection. For Nigerian fintechs and enterprises concerned about compliance with card scheme requirements, CBI Monie's certified status removes the burden of achieving independent PCI DSS certification for card data handling within the integrating platform's environment. QR code payment functionality in CBI Monie enables merchant-displayed QR codes that customers can scan to initiate payments using their mobile banking apps or fintech wallets. As QR code payment adoption grows in Nigeria — driven by CBN's promotion of cashless payment infrastructure and the expansion of mobile banking usage — merchants integrated with CBI Monie can offer this payment channel alongside traditional card and bank transfer methods without additional infrastructure. Merchant onboarding APIs within CBI Monie allow platform operators managing merchant networks to programmatically onboard new merchants, verify their identity and business credentials, and activate payment acceptance — building automated merchant lifecycle management for agent banking platforms, marketplace operators, and payment aggregators managing large merchant portfolios in Nigeria.
Payments, Development Tools
Squad is a Nigerian payment gateway and developer-first payment infrastructure platform operated by HabariPay Limited, the fintech subsidiary of Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) — the parent company of Guaranty Trust Bank, one of Nigeria's Tier 1 commercial banks. This institutional backing gives Squad a unique position in the Nigerian fintech ecosystem: it combines the regulatory standing of a CBN-licensed commercial bank group with a modern API-first developer experience. Squad is available at squadco.com and provides documentation at docs.squadco.com. The Squad API is RESTful with JSON payloads. Authentication is via Bearer Token — developers obtain a secret key from the Squad dashboard and pass it in every request as Authorization: Bearer sk_test_xxxx (sandbox) or Authorization: Bearer sk_live_xxxx (production). All amounts are passed in Naira (NGN), unlike some Nigerian gateways that require amounts in Kobo. Squad's payment gateway supports card payments (Verve, Visa, Mastercard), bank transfers, and USSD — the three primary payment channels used by Nigerian consumers. The standard integration follows a three-step flow: initialize a transaction by posting to the Squad initiate endpoint with amount, email, and a unique transaction reference; display the Squad checkout widget to the customer; and verify the transaction on your server after the customer completes payment. Squad provides both a hosted checkout page and an embeddable inline SDK for seamless checkout experiences. One of Squad's most notable differentiators is its fee structure. The payment gateway charges a percentage fee capped at ₦1,500 per transaction — lower than Paystack (₦2,000 cap) and Monnify (₦2,000 cap). For virtual account collections, Squad charges a percentage capped at ₦1,000, which is again among the lowest caps in the Nigerian market for bank transfer collections. Payment links (used for social commerce and invoicing) are charged at 1% for local transactions and 3.5% for international transactions. This pricing advantage makes Squad particularly attractive for businesses processing high-value transactions, where the cap limits the absolute cost per transaction regardless of size. Squad's Virtual Accounts feature assigns a dedicated bank account number to each customer for use in collections. Businesses can create virtual accounts for individual customers — when a customer transfers any amount to their dedicated account, the Squad webhook fires and the balance is credited in real time. This is widely used by Nigerian savings apps, investment platforms, and bill payment services where customers top up wallets via bank transfer. The Subscription API allows platforms to create recurring billing products. When a customer first pays via Squad, the platform receives a unique charge token tied to that customer's card. Future charges can be triggered by passing this token without requiring the customer to re-enter card details — enabling automatic monthly subscriptions, usage-based billing, and installment plans for Nigerian consumers. Squad also provides a Payouts API for disbursing funds to any Nigerian bank account. Developers submit a destination bank code, account number, and amount, and Squad executes the transfer. Payout pricing is competitive and the API supports both single and bulk transfers. The BVN verification endpoint available through Squad allows platforms to look up a Bank Verification Number and return the associated name and basic identity information. This is commonly used by Nigerian lending products and fintech apps to confirm user identity as part of CBN-required KYC processes. The Squad sandbox environment provides full test mode access. Developers can test all features — gateway payments, virtual accounts, subscriptions, payouts, and BVN verification — using test credentials without processing real transactions. Moving to live requires completing Squad's business onboarding, including submitting CAC registration, director BVN, and a valid business bank account. From a compliance perspective, HabariPay Limited is a CBN-licensed Payment Service Provider operating under the regulatory oversight of the Central Bank of Nigeria. GTCO's banking license adds an additional layer of institutional compliance. Squad is also PCI-DSS certified, ensuring that card payment data is processed and stored to the highest security standards. Squad runs an annual Hackathon for Nigerian students and early-career developers — Squad by GTBank Hackathon — providing cash prizes and API credits to winners. This investment in the developer community has built significant goodwill among Nigeria's emerging developer ecosystem. Known challenges: Squad's documentation, while functional, is less comprehensive than Paystack's. Some advanced integration patterns (split payments, multi-vendor marketplace flows) are not as fully documented. The Squad developer community is smaller than Paystack's, which can make troubleshooting harder for niche use cases. Frequently Asked Questions: Is Squad backed by GTBank? Yes — Squad is operated by HabariPay Limited, which is a subsidiary of Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO), the same holding company that owns GTBank. What is the fee cap advantage? Squad's gateway fee is capped at ₦1,500 versus ₦2,000 for Paystack and Monnify — meaning on large transactions, you save ₦500 per collection. Does Squad support dollar transactions? Squad supports international card payments (Visa/Mastercard). Settlement is in NGN. Can I test Squad without registering a business? Yes — create a free developer account and use the sandbox with test credentials before submitting any business documents.
Data Validation, Development Tools, Payments
NumlookupAPI is a phone number lookup and validation API providing real-time carrier identification, line type detection, geographic location data, and number format normalization for global phone numbers including Nigerian (+234) numbers. Operated by EverAPI (everapihq), the platform offers a developer-friendly integration path with a free trial requiring no credit card, paid plans from $9.99/month, and a 99.99% uptime SLA on all paid tiers. The API is designed for businesses that need to validate phone numbers at point of entry, enrich CRM contact data, or screen registrations for invalid or suspicious numbers — without the complexity of a full communications platform. ## What the API Does A single NumlookupAPI call accepts a phone number and returns: - **Validity**: Whether the number is a valid, recognized phone number. - **Number (E.164)**: The number in international E.164 format. - **Carrier**: The mobile network operator (e.g., MTN Nigeria, Airtel Nigeria, Globacom, 9mobile). - **Line type**: Mobile, landline, VoIP, or unknown. - **Location**: Country and sub-national region associated with the number prefix. - **Country code**: ISO 2-letter country code (NG for Nigerian numbers). The API integrates with CRM systems, marketing platforms, and custom applications for automated phone number quality management. ## How Developers Use It GET request to the NumlookupAPI endpoint with the phone number and API key. The response is a JSON object with all available metadata. SDKs and client libraries are available for popular languages through the GitHub repository (everapihq/numlookupapi). Integration is straightforward and can be completed in under an hour. ## Pricing & Fees - **Free trial**: Available with no credit card required for initial testing. - **Paid plans**: Start at $9.99/month providing 7,000 API requests per month. - **Custom plans**: Available for businesses requiring more than 300,000 requests per month. - All paid plans include unlimited API connections (no concurrent request limit) and the 99.99% uptime guarantee. ## Authentication API key authentication. The key is passed as a parameter in the API request. Keys are issued immediately after registration. ## Rate Limits Rate limits are based on monthly request quotas per plan tier. Paid plans come with unlimited concurrent API connections — requests are processed without queuing. Monthly quotas reset each billing cycle. ## Compliance NumlookupAPI processes phone numbers for validation and lookup purposes. Data handling policies are consistent with standard API service agreements. For Nigerian deployments, the carrier and format data returned supports phone number verification as part of broader user onboarding flows. ## Challenges & Gotchas for Nigerian Developers 1. **No SIM Swap detection**: NumlookupAPI provides carrier and line type data but does not offer SIM Swap detection for fraud prevention. Use Twilio Lookup for SIM Swap signals. 2. **Carrier accuracy with MNP**: Nigerian mobile number portability can cause carrier misidentification after a user switches networks. The API reflects original carrier assignment. 3. **7,000 requests at $9.99**: This is a reasonable starting volume but will be exhausted quickly for apps with active daily registrations. Plan your tier based on expected daily validation volume. 4. **USD billing**: NumlookupAPI charges in USD. Nigerian developers need a USD-capable payment method. 5. **Limited documentation depth**: As a smaller API provider, documentation and community support resources are more limited than Twilio or Abstract API. ## Company Background NumlookupAPI is operated by EverAPI (everapihq), a developer-focused API company providing a portfolio of data enrichment and validation APIs. The platform is available as an open-source client library on GitHub and through the Rapid API marketplace in addition to the main website. ## Frequently Asked Questions **Q: Does NumlookupAPI support Nigerian phone numbers?** A: Yes. Nigerian numbers (+234) are supported with carrier identification for MTN, Airtel, Glo, and 9mobile. **Q: Is a credit card required to try the API?** A: No. A free trial is available without credit card details. **Q: What is the uptime guarantee?** A: Paid plans include a 99.99% uptime SLA over the trailing 12-month period. **Q: How many requests does the entry-level plan include?** A: The $9.99/month plan includes 7,000 API requests per month.
Banking & Fintech, Trading & Currency Exchange
NGX Data Portal is the official market data API provided by the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) — Nigeria's primary securities exchange — giving developers, financial technology companies, investment platforms, and fintech startups access to real-time and historical equities data, market indices, trading statistics, and capital market information directly from the authoritative source. For Nigerian financial applications that need reliable, official stock market data, the NGX Data Portal is the most legally authoritative source available, directly supplying the data that underlies Nigeria's capital markets. Equities data from the NGX Data Portal covers all companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange, including those on the Main Board, Growth Board, and Alternative Securities Market (ASeM). For each listed company, the API provides current day trade data: last traded price, opening price, daily high and low, trading volume, total deal count, and market capitalization. This comprehensive intraday snapshot enables Nigerian investment apps to display accurate, current stock information to retail investors building their portfolios on Nigerian equities like Dangote Cement, MTN Nigeria, Zenith Bank, Access Holdings, and other major NGX-listed companies. The NGX All-Share Index (ASI) and sector indices are accessible through the portal, providing the benchmark indices against which Nigerian portfolio performance is typically measured. The ASI is Nigeria's headline stock market indicator, widely reported in Nigerian financial media and used by fund managers, institutional investors, and retail investors to gauge overall market direction. Sector indices — Banking, Insurance, Oil and Gas, Consumer Goods, Industrial — allow sector-level analysis for Nigerian investment platforms offering sector-focused portfolio tools or thematic investment recommendations. Historical price data through the NGX Data Portal enables backtesting of investment strategies, computing of long-run returns for NGX-listed stocks, analysis of historical volatility, and construction of financial models for Nigerian securities. Academic researchers at Nigerian universities, investment analysts at stockbroker firms, and quantitative finance professionals can use the historical data to build evidence-based investment research and analysis. End-of-day (EOD) data snapshots capture each trading day's final prices, volumes, and statistics for all listed securities, providing a daily record for tracking portfolio positions, computing daily returns, and maintaining a database of Nigerian securities prices. Wealth management platforms and portfolio tracking apps serving Nigerian investors need reliable EOD data to compute accurate daily portfolio valuations and track performance over time. Corporate actions data including dividends, rights issues, bonus issues, and stock splits is available through the NGX Data Portal, enabling investment apps to accurately adjust historical price series for corporate actions and show investors the true total return history of their holdings — accounting for cash dividends received and bonus shares credited over the holding period. The NGX Data Portal operates on a freemium model with a free tier for basic market data access and paid commercial licenses for real-time streaming data, higher request volumes, and redistribution rights. Nigerian regulated financial services businesses that publicly display NGX data in their platforms may need a formal data licensing agreement with NGX. Developers can register for a free API key on the NGX Data Portal developer section and begin accessing market data immediately for testing and development purposes.
Trading & Currency Exchange
Simple REST API for exchange rates with frequent updates and comprehensive currency coverage. Easy integration for rate lookups and historical analysis.
Payments, eCommerce
Stripe is the world's leading developer-first payment infrastructure platform, offering a comprehensive suite of APIs for accepting payments, managing subscriptions, running marketplaces, issuing cards, and managing financial operations across 195+ countries. Stripe processes hundreds of billions of dollars annually for millions of businesses globally and is widely regarded as setting the gold standard for payment API design, documentation quality, and developer experience. CRITICAL NOTE FOR NIGERIAN BUSINESSES: Stripe does not currently support merchant account registration for Nigeria-incorporated businesses, NGN settlement to Nigerian bank accounts, or local Nigerian payment methods (bank transfers, USSD, Verve cards). Nigerian businesses cannot register a Stripe account as a Nigerian entity. Nigerian businesses needing local payment processing should use CBN-licensed alternatives: Paystack (Stripe subsidiary, Nigeria-optimized), Flutterwave, Monnify, Kora, or other Nigerian-licensed payment processors. However, Stripe remains highly relevant to the Nigerian tech ecosystem in several important capacities. Paystack — Nigeria's leading payment gateway and most developer-loved fintech API — was acquired by Stripe in 2020 and has adopted many of Stripe's API design conventions. Nigerian developers who learn Stripe's patterns (idempotency keys, webhook signature verification, payment intent lifecycle, connect architecture) will find this knowledge directly transferable when building on Paystack or other modern payment APIs. Diaspora and cross-border cases: Nigerian-founded companies incorporated in the United States, United Kingdom, or other Stripe-supported markets can register Stripe accounts under those foreign entities and use Stripe to charge international customers. This is a common path for Nigerian SaaS founders who incorporate in Delaware (for US market access or investor requirements) and use Stripe to charge global subscribers. The Nigerian individual may build and operate the product, but the contracting entity is foreign-incorporated. Stripe Connect is Stripe's marketplace and platform payment architecture, allowing a platform business to facilitate payments between buyers and sellers or service providers with automatic split payment, commission deduction, and payout management. For Nigerian developers building marketplace products intended for international markets — freelance platforms, services marketplaces, SaaS reseller programs — Stripe Connect provides the payment infrastructure to handle multi-party money flows between international participants. Stripe Billing handles subscription management, recurring payment scheduling, proration for mid-cycle plan changes, invoice generation, retry logic for failed payments, and metered billing for usage-based pricing. For SaaS products serving international markets, Stripe Billing reduces subscription payment infrastructure development from months to days while handling edge cases like payment method expiration, card declines, and dunning flows automatically. Stripe Radar is an AI-powered fraud detection system that scores every payment request in real time and can automatically block suspicious transactions based on customizable rules. For platforms handling international transactions that include potentially high-fraud regions or payment patterns, Radar provides machine learning-based fraud prevention without building custom fraud detection infrastructure. Stripe's documentation is widely considered the best in the payments industry — comprehensive, accurate, with full API reference, extensive guides for common integration patterns, and code examples in multiple languages. Nigerian developers studying payment API design use Stripe documentation as a reference model for understanding best practices in API design, error handling, webhook architecture, and payment security that apply across any payment provider.
Payments, Development Tools
Kuda Open API is the developer platform of Kuda Bank — Nigeria's first fully mobile-only bank, licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Launched to enable businesses to embed banking infrastructure directly into their products, the Kuda Open API provides access to real Nigerian bank account infrastructure, NIP-powered instant transfers, dynamic virtual accounts, bill payments, and instant settlement capabilities — all through a clean RESTful API backed by one of Nigeria's most trusted and innovative financial institutions. Kuda Bank was founded in 2019 by Babs Ogundeyi and Musty Mustapha, and quickly grew into one of Nigeria's most popular neobanks, with millions of individual users. In 2022–2023, Kuda expanded its infrastructure to businesses through the Open API program, enabling companies to build financial products on top of its licensed banking rails — without needing their own CBN banking license. **What the Kuda Open API Does** The API is designed for businesses that need to move money programmatically within Nigeria. Key capabilities include: - **Bank Transfers**: Send NGN to any Nigerian bank account through the NIP (Nigeria Interbank Payment) system. Available as single transfers or bulk transfer batches, making it ideal for payroll, vendor payments, and mass disbursements. - **Dynamic Virtual Accounts**: Create unique Nigerian bank account numbers (tied to your Kuda business account) that customers can pay to. Payments trigger instant webhook notifications, enabling real-time payment confirmation without manual reconciliation. - **Single-use Account Numbers**: Generate one-time account numbers for specific payment purposes, reducing fraud and simplifying payment attribution. - **Instant Settlement**: Funds received can be settled in near real-time at 0.3% of the transaction value, capped at ₦100 — providing faster cash flow compared to traditional payment cycles. - **Account Verification**: Verify that a bank account name matches the account number before initiating a transfer — a critical fraud-prevention step for Nigerian fintech applications. - **Transaction History & Balances**: Query account balances and full transaction histories programmatically — essential for reconciliation, reporting, and financial dashboards. - **Bill Payments**: Purchase airtime, mobile data, cable TV subscriptions (DSTV, GOtv, Startimes), and electricity prepaid tokens via API, with commission opportunities on each transaction. **Authentication** The Kuda Open API uses API key authentication. Developers register on the Kuda Developer Portal (developer.kuda.com), complete business verification, and receive an API key that is passed as a Bearer token in the Authorization header of all API requests. The sandbox environment is accessible immediately after registration, with production access unlocked after KYB (Know Your Business) verification. **Sandbox Environment** Kuda provides a full sandbox environment that replicates all production capabilities. Developers can test transfers, create virtual accounts, simulate incoming payments, trigger webhook events, and validate account verification flows without moving real money. This makes it safe to develop and test integrations before going live. **Pricing** Kuda's pricing model is flat-fee per transaction — not percentage-based — which is a significant advantage for high-value transactions: - Transfers of ₦0–₦10,000: ₦12 per transaction - Transfers of ₦10,001–₦100,000: ₦10 per transaction - Transfers of ₦100,001–₦400,000: ₦9 per transaction - Transfers above ₦400,001: ₦7 per transaction - Instant settlement: 0.3% of transaction value, capped at ₦100 - Virtual account fee: 0.1% of transaction value (approximately) - No hidden fees — the listed prices are the final prices paid. This flat-fee structure means that a ₦1,000,000 transfer costs exactly ₦7, compared to percentage-based gateways that might charge ₦15,000 for the same transaction. **Nigeria Access & Requirements** To access production APIs, businesses must complete KYB (Know Your Business) verification, which requires: a CAC Certificate of Incorporation or Business Name Registration, BVN and government-issued ID for directors, and an active Nigerian business bank account. Sandbox access requires only registration — no documents needed. **Compliance & Regulatory Standing** Kuda Bank holds a Microfinance Bank licence from the CBN. The Open API inherits this regulatory standing, meaning virtual accounts and transfers executed through the API are backed by a licensed Nigerian financial institution. This is a significant compliance advantage for fintech builders who need to demonstrate regulated banking infrastructure to enterprise clients or regulators. **Challenges & Considerations** While Kuda's pricing model is excellent for high-value transfers, the ₦12 flat fee per low-value transfer can be proportionally high for very small transactions (e.g., ₦12 fee on a ₦100 transfer = 12%). Card payment acceptance is not currently part of the Open API — businesses needing card-based collection still require an additional payment gateway like Paystack or Flutterwave. International transfers and multi-currency account support are also not available. **Frequently Asked Questions** Q: Do I need a CBN license to use the Kuda Open API? A: No. Kuda's CBN Microfinance Bank license covers the banking infrastructure, so your business can offer account and transfer products without obtaining a separate license. Q: Can I use the sandbox without submitting documents? A: Yes. Sandbox registration requires only an email and business details. Full KYB documents are only required before going live. Q: Does Kuda support card payments through the Open API? A: No. The Kuda Open API is focused on bank transfers and virtual accounts, not card acceptance. Q: How fast are NIP transfers? A: NIP transfers are typically instant (within seconds) during normal operating hours. Q: Is Kuda Open API available to businesses outside Nigeria? A: The API is primarily designed for Nigerian-registered businesses. International companies may face restrictions on KYB verification.
Blockchain, Trading & Currency Exchange
Crypto APIs is a comprehensive blockchain infrastructure platform providing REST API access to over 20 blockchain networks through a single integration, with a unified endpoint structure that covers blockchain data, wallet management, address monitoring, NFT data, token information, mempool monitoring, and market data. For Nigerian developers who need coverage of multiple chains — Bitcoin for savings, Ethereum for DeFi, Tron for cheap USDT transfers, BNB Chain for trading — Crypto APIs provides a one-stop solution that reduces integration complexity and development time significantly. Nigeria's crypto ecosystem is multi-chain by nature. Nigerian users route different activities through different chains based on transaction costs and speed: Bitcoin for large value transfers and savings, Tron TRC-20 for USDT because the fees are fractions of a cent, Ethereum for DeFi protocols, and BNB Chain for trading at lower gas costs than Ethereum. A Nigerian wallet or payment application serving real users must support this diversity. Without Crypto APIs, building multi-chain support means separate integrations, separate node providers, and separate documentation for every chain. Crypto APIs unifies everything. The Blockchain Data module provides address information, transaction details, and block data for all supported chains. For Bitcoin (and other UTXO chains), this includes UTXO sets, inputs, outputs, and confirmation counts. For Ethereum and EVM chains, this includes internal transactions, event logs, and contract data. The endpoint structure is consistent — the chain name appears in the URL path, but the request/response format is the same — making multi-chain development straightforward. HD (Hierarchical Deterministic) Wallet management covers the full lifecycle: create an HD wallet with a master key, generate receiving addresses, sync the wallet to discover used addresses and balances, and build transactions. Crypto APIs handles all the chain-specific derivation path details, ensuring compatibility with standard wallet specifications. For Nigerian fintech companies building custodial or semi-custodial wallets, this provides a managed wallet infrastructure without the complexity of implementing BIP32/BIP44 from scratch. Address monitoring and webhooks allow subscribing to blockchain events on specific addresses. When a monitored address receives a transaction — whether in the mempool (unconfirmed) or in a confirmed block — Crypto APIs delivers an HTTP webhook notification to the configured endpoint. For Nigerian payment processors and exchanges, this event-driven architecture replaces inefficient polling loops and provides near-real-time payment detection. Webhook events include new incoming transactions, confirmed transactions, and double-spend alerts. NFT data endpoints return metadata, ownership history, and transfer events for ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens on Ethereum and other EVM chains. Nigerian NFT platforms can query NFT ownership without building their own indexing infrastructure. Token information endpoints return ERC-20 and BEP-20 token details including name, symbol, decimals, total supply, and holder counts. Mempool monitoring provides visibility into unconfirmed transactions — useful for Nigerian applications that need to detect incoming payments before block confirmation, estimate fee rates for outgoing transactions, or monitor for double-spend attempts on high-value incoming payments. Market data endpoints return current and historical prices for thousands of cryptocurrencies against fiat currencies including USD and, for select providers, NGN. Exchange rates between crypto pairs are available for fee calculation and display purposes. The free tier provides 10,000 credits per month — sufficient for prototyping and low-traffic applications. The Startup plan at $49/month (100,000 credits) serves small Nigerian startups, while the Business plan at $149/month handles production traffic. Enterprise plans with custom SLAs are available for established Nigerian exchanges and financial institutions.
Utility Tools, Payments
Long-standing Nigerian VTU platform providing airtime, data, and bill payment APIs. ClubKonnect has been serving Nigerian developers for years with reliable VTU services. Offers integration for airtime recharge, data bundles, cable TV subscriptions, and utility bill payments across all major Nigerian networks and providers.
Development Tools, Payments, Trading & Currency Exchange
The Nomba Global Payout API is a cross-border payment disbursement product launched by Nomba in March 2026, designed specifically for Nigerian payment operators, remittance platforms, and fintechs that need to collect Naira or stablecoin funds from Nigerian users and disburse to recipients in international markets. It eliminates the need for operators to manually source foreign exchange or maintain multi-currency liquidity pools across different countries. Nomba is a CBN-licensed Nigerian Payment Service Provider. The Global Payout API represents a significant expansion of Nomba's capabilities beyond domestic Nigerian payments into the cross-border remittance corridor, addressing one of the most operationally complex challenges facing Nigerian fintech operators: access to affordable, reliable FX and settlement infrastructure for international disbursements. The API enables operators to collect funds in two ways: via NGN virtual accounts (where Nigerian senders transfer Naira) or via stablecoin deposits (USDT or USDC). Once funds are received, Nomba automatically converts them to the target currency and routes the disbursement through the appropriate local payment rail in the destination country. This auto-conversion capability is a critical differentiator — operators do not need to hold USD, GBP, EUR, or CAD reserves; Nomba handles the full FX lifecycle. Supported corridors at launch include: United Kingdom via Faster Payments (transfers up to £1,000,000, settled in 1–3 hours), European Union via SEPA transfer (up to €100,000, settled in under 1 hour), Canada via Interac (instant) and standard bank transfer, and the Democratic Republic of Congo via Mobile Money (instant) and bank transfer. Additional corridors are expected to expand over time. The developer integration flow involves four main steps. First, call the exchange rates endpoint to get the current NGN-to-destination-currency rate. Optionally use the Convert Money endpoint to lock this rate before initiating the transfer. Then call the payment methods endpoint for the destination country to retrieve available rails and required recipient details (bank account type, purpose of payment, etc.). Finally, authorize the transfer with the recipient's bank details and monitor the transaction status via the returned transaction ID. Authentication uses OAuth2 Bearer Tokens, consistent with Nomba's main API. Developers use either Client Credentials (for server-to-server) or PKCE flow (for mobile apps). Webhooks deliver real-time status updates for each disbursement, enabling operators to update their internal systems when a transfer succeeds or fails. Pricing for the Global Payout API is not publicly published. Nomba charges transaction-based fees for each corridor; operators are advised to contact Nomba's team for enterprise pricing based on expected monthly volumes. Given that the product targets high-volume remittance operators and fintechs, volume discounts are likely available. The Global Payout API is particularly significant for the Nigerian diaspora remittance market. Nigeria receives over $20 billion per year in remittances and is Africa's largest remittance destination. By enabling Nigerian-licensed platforms to send money OUT of Nigeria via a single API, Nomba addresses the reverse corridor — outbound from Nigeria — which is critical for freelancer payments, business vendor payments, and capital repatriation. From a compliance standpoint, all cross-border disbursements via Nomba are processed within the CBN's regulatory framework. Nomba holds the necessary licenses for international money transfer operations. For high-volume corridors, operators may be required to provide AML documentation and demonstrate the nature of their disbursement use case. Frequently Asked Questions: Which countries can I disburse to? At launch in March 2026: UK, EU, Canada, and DRC. Additional corridors are planned. Contact Nomba for the latest corridor list. Can I collect from Nigerian users in NGN? Yes — Nomba provides NGN virtual accounts for collection. The collected Naira is automatically converted to the destination currency at the prevailing rate. Can I lock the FX rate before initiating a transfer? Yes — use the Convert Money endpoint to lock the exchange rate before authorizing the disbursement. This protects against rate fluctuations between quoting and execution. Is this separate from Nomba's domestic API? Yes — the Global Payout API is a distinct product with its own documentation at developer.nomba.com/docs/products/global-payout/introduction. Domestic Nigerian payments use the main Nomba Checkout and Transfer APIs.
Blockchain, Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Quidax is Nigeria's first Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)-licensed cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2018 by Buchi Okoro. The SEC provisional license, obtained in 2024, authorizes Quidax to operate as a Digital Assets Exchange — allowing it to collaborate with Nigerian banks and financial institutions, and offer institutional-grade API access to businesses building crypto-enabled products. Quidax has further deepened its infrastructure play by partnering with Lisk, an Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain optimized for Africa, to build DeFi rails connecting Quidax's NGN liquidity with on-chain applications. The Quidax Developer API (developer.quidax.com) is designed for businesses — not just retail traders — who want to embed cryptocurrency services into their products. The API enables fintechs, e-commerce platforms, and financial applications to integrate crypto buying, selling, holding, and payment acceptance without building exchange infrastructure from scratch. Quidax boasts a 99.8% uptime SLA backed by multi-region infrastructure, making it suitable for production-grade business integrations. Authentication is via Bearer Token (API Key) obtained from the Quidax account dashboard. Requests are made over HTTPS with JSON payloads. Quidax provides webhook notifications for transaction events including order fills, deposits, and withdrawals. One of the most commercially interesting features for Nigerian developers is stablecoin payment acceptance. Businesses can configure Quidax to accept USDT (Tether) or USDC (USD Coin) from customers and automatically receive NGN settlement in their business account. This eliminates the need for merchants to manage cryptocurrency volatility while offering customers the option to pay with stablecoins — a payment rail popular with Nigerian diaspora and crypto-native consumers. Quidax supports multiple digital assets including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), USDT, USDC, and other tokens listed on the exchange. The crypto trading API allows platforms to execute market and limit orders, query order books, access price feeds, manage wallets, and retrieve transaction history programmatically. The Lisk partnership announced in 2026 opens Quidax's liquidity to DeFi protocols on the Lisk network. Developers building DeFi applications on Lisk can access Quidax's Nigerian NGN/crypto liquidity pools — creating Africa's first DeFi infrastructure with Nigerian naira integration. This positions Quidax at the intersection of centralized exchange liquidity and DeFi composability. From a regulatory standpoint, Quidax's SEC Digital Assets Exchange license is the most comprehensive crypto regulatory approval in Nigeria. The SEC license permits institutional partnerships with banks, which is not available to unlicensed crypto platforms. This creates significant competitive advantages for developers building crypto products that require banking integration or institutional KYC. All users and businesses accessing the Quidax API must complete KYC verification as required by the Nigerian SEC and SCUML (Special Control Unit Against Money Laundering). For businesses embedding Quidax APIs, compliance documentation for the business entity is required during onboarding. Known challenges: The Quidax API is more focused on exchange functionality than payment gateway use cases. For pure payment acceptance without crypto trading, developers may find the API overhead higher than using stablecoin-native payment APIs. Additionally, the regulatory landscape for crypto in Nigeria continues to evolve, which may affect permitted use cases. Frequently Asked Questions: Is Quidax the only SEC-licensed crypto exchange in Nigeria? Quidax was the first to receive the provisional SEC Digital Assets Exchange license in Nigeria (2024). Other exchanges are applying for licenses under the same framework. Can I use Quidax to accept Bitcoin payments on my website? Yes — but Quidax also provides stablecoin (USDT/USDC) payment acceptance which protects merchants from Bitcoin price volatility while still accepting crypto. Does Quidax support NGN withdrawal to bank accounts? Yes — businesses receive NGN settlement to their Nigerian bank accounts for accepted crypto payments.
Banking & Fintech, Development Tools, Payments
Financial data API platform that aggregates African financial data for developers and fintechs. Pngme provides access to bank transaction data, mobile money data, and financial insights across Nigeria and African markets. Enables credit scoring, risk assessment, and alternative credit building for underbanked populations.
Banking & Fintech, Trading & Currency Exchange
NGX Pulse is the Nigerian Exchange Group market data and analytics platform providing real-time trading alerts, market news, and intelligence. The NGX Pulse API enables developers to integrate NSE market data, trading signals, and market analytics into applications. Nigerian fintech, trading, and investment platforms use NGX Pulse API for real-time market intelligence, price alerts, and portfolio tracking with curated market insights.
eCommerce, Payments
CredPal is a Nigerian BNPL and consumer credit specialist providing APIs for installment payments. The CredPal API enables "shop now, pay in installments" functionality for online and offline retail. Merchants integrated with CredPal can offer customers up to 6-month payment plans. Nigerian retailers, e-commerce platforms, and partners like Jumia use CredPal API to offer flexible payment options and increase sales through installment options.
Development Tools, Trading & Currency Exchange
Korapay Exchange Rate API provides real-time Nigerian naira (NGN) exchange rates sourced directly from Korapay — a licensed Nigerian fintech company regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria as a Payment Solution Service Provider. Because the rates are pulled from an active payment processor that handles real Nigerian FX transactions, the exchange rates reflect actual commercial rates being used for Nigerian cross-border payments, making them commercially relevant for fintech apps that want to display rates aligned with what users will actually experience when sending or receiving international payments through Nigerian channels. The exchange rate data covers major currency pairs against the Nigerian naira — USD/NGN, GBP/NGN, EUR/NGN, CAD/NGN, and other commonly transacted currencies — with rates updated in near real-time to reflect current market conditions. For Nigerian fintech applications displaying FX rates for informational purposes or for pre-transaction rate indication, the Korapay rates provide a credible commercial rate from a regulated Nigerian entity rather than a generic data aggregator. Multi-currency wallet applications used by Nigerian diaspora communities and cross-border payment platforms displaying "how much will my recipient get" estimates benefit most from the Korapay Exchange Rate API. When a Nigerian in the UK wants to send GBP to family in Lagos, the app can call the Korapay API to display the current NGN amount the recipient would receive — giving users a rate that is realistic relative to what Nigerian fintech payment channels actually offer, rather than a theoretical interbank rate that no Nigerian can actually access. Nigerian e-commerce platforms selling internationally or pricing products in US dollars for domestic Nigerian customers use exchange rate APIs to display NGN-equivalent prices. Showing the naira price of a $100 product using the Korapay rate provides customers with a realistic naira cost estimate that accounts for the commercial rate applicable to Nigerian payment processing, reducing disappointment at checkout when the actual charged amount differs from an unrealistic official rate estimate. Invoice and payment systems for Nigerian freelancers and remote workers who receive payments in foreign currencies and need to communicate naira estimates to clients can use the Korapay Exchange Rate API to generate NGN invoice amounts that reflect realistic commercial FX conversion rates. A Nigerian software developer invoicing a UK client in GBP can display the current NGN equivalent on their invoice for their own records. Integration with the Korapay Exchange Rate API uses standard REST endpoints with API key authentication, returning JSON responses with the current rate for each currency pair. Nigerian developers already using Korapay for payment processing can add the exchange rate endpoint to their integration without additional authentication setup, since the same API key covers both payment and rate endpoints. The API is available through the Korapay developer portal at developers.korapay.com with a freemium model — basic rate lookup functionality is accessible on the free tier, with higher request volumes and additional features available on paid plans. For Nigerian startups building FX-aware products, the free tier is sufficient for initial product development and low-traffic production use before upgrading to accommodate growth. Nigerian developers building personal finance dashboards can display side-by-side Korapay rates versus CBN official rates to give users context on the market-to-official rate gap, a key insight for understanding the real cost of FX transactions in Nigeria. The API is simple to integrate and well-suited to high-frequency rate display applications.
Payments, Development Tools
Alat by Wema is Wema Bank's comprehensive digital banking and payments platform providing APIs for payment processing, account management, and embedded finance solutions. The platform enables businesses and fintech partners to accept payments through multiple channels (card payments, bank transfers, bank details/static accounts, USSD), manage accounts, and integrate banking services. Alat by Wema powers AlatPay, Wema's battle-tested payment gateway, and offers partner banking APIs for approved fintech partners. Key capabilities include: Instant payment processing with transparent pricing and no hidden charges, Multiple payment channels (Card, Bank Transfer, Bank Details, USSD, Static Account), Real-time merchant dashboard, Dedicated developer support, Unlimited transaction processing, Sandbox environment for testing, Partner banking APIs for embedded finance. Nigerian e-commerce platforms, service providers, USSD-based businesses, and fintech companies use Alat by Wema for reliable payment acceptance and banking integration. API Base URL: https://apibox.alatpay.ng. Support: alatpaysupport@wemabank.com. Powered by WEMA Bank.
Payments
MTN Nigeria Mobile Money API providing payment infrastructure for collections, disbursements, remittances, and request-to-pay services. MTN MoMo enables businesses and developers to integrate mobile money payments directly into their applications, leveraging MTN Nigeria's extensive network of subscribers (70+ million across Nigeria). Supports multiple payment channels including USSD, SMS, and account linking for seamless integration across all user segments.
Payments, Development Tools
Payaza Africa Limited is a pan-African payment gateway and financial services platform headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, with operating licenses in 16+ countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Liberia, Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda, Benin Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Zimbabwe, Namibia, the DRC, Bahrain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and the UAE. This extensive multi-country licensing makes Payaza one of the most geographically diverse African payment platforms available to developers — a single Payaza API integration can power both local Nigerian payments and international collections from the UK, Canada, and the UAE. Payaza's developer documentation is available at docs.payaza.africa, with integration support at payaza.africa/integration-support. The API is RESTful with JSON payloads. Authentication uses a Bearer Token (Secret Key from the Payaza merchant dashboard). The API design follows standard patterns familiar to developers who have used Paystack or Flutterwave. Payaza supports card payments (Visa, Mastercard, Verve), bank transfer checkout, and mobile money across its supported markets. In Nigeria specifically, the gateway supports local debit card transactions, bank transfer collections, and outbound payouts to Nigerian bank accounts. In West Africa, mobile money is supported via integration with MTN Mobile Money, Orange Money, and other providers. For UK and international merchants, Payaza's local acquiring licenses enable card acceptance in British pounds and other major currencies. Multi-currency support is a primary differentiator. Merchants can configure Payaza to accept payments in NGN, GBP, USD, CAD, EUR, KES, GHS, and other currencies depending on their licensed market. This is particularly valuable for Nigerian diaspora businesses, e-commerce platforms with international customers, and SaaS companies billing customers globally. Payaza offers fast local and international payouts. For Nigerian businesses, payouts to local bank accounts are processed within standard Nigerian interbank timelines. For international payouts, Payaza's licenses in the UK, US, and Canada enable direct disbursement to foreign bank accounts without the complexity of SWIFT correspondent banking. The platform is built with security and compliance at its core. Payaza holds investment-grade security certifications and is PCI-DSS compliant. The platform has been described as offering "the most enjoyable payment experience" by Nigerian SME users, reflecting a focus on clean UI, fast onboarding, and responsive merchant support. Payaza has a particular strength in the creator economy and SME segment. Nigerian freelancers, digital product sellers, and content creators use Payaza to collect international card payments from overseas clients and receive settlement in their Nigerian accounts. The payment link feature requires no coding — making it accessible to non-technical merchants. Exact pricing is not publicly published on the Payaza website. Transaction fees are approximately 1.4–1.5% for local Nigerian transactions plus applicable flat fees, with international rates higher. Merchants are advised to contact Payaza directly for current rates based on their expected transaction volume and geography. The Payaza sandbox environment is available for testing. Moving from sandbox to live requires completing KYC onboarding including CAC registration, director BVN and government ID, and a business bank account. For international markets, Payaza may request additional compliance documentation depending on the country. From a compliance standpoint, Payaza Africa Limited is licensed by the CBN in Nigeria and has equivalent regulatory approvals in each of its 16+ operating jurisdictions. The breadth of licenses is a significant competitive advantage that took years to accumulate and represents a high barrier to entry for competitors. Frequently Asked Questions: How many countries does Payaza support? Payaza is licensed in 16+ countries as of 2026, including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, UK, US, Canada, and UAE. Additional markets are being added. Does Payaza support USD and GBP collection? Yes — Payaza can collect USD and GBP directly using its US and UK licenses, eliminating the need for separate payment processors in those markets. What is the onboarding time for Payaza? Nigerian business onboarding typically takes 2–5 business days depending on KYC document completeness. Is Payaza publicly traded? No — Payaza Africa Limited is a private company.