3 Best APIs for Card Issuing in Nigeria

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.

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.

Wireless Card Issuing and USSD API is an African fintech infrastructure platform that combines card issuance capabilities with USSD payment processing, providing two distinct but complementary payment channels through a single API integration. By offering both card-based payments for smartphone and internet users and USSD-based payments for feature phone and low-connectivity users, Wireless enables Nigerian and African platforms to maximize their payment acceptance coverage across the full spectrum of device and connectivity capability in the market. USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) is a GSM protocol that works on every mobile phone — from basic feature phones to modern smartphones — by dialing a short code that initiates a menu-driven session with a backend system. USSD requires no internet connection, no data plan, no smartphone, and no app installation. The payment session is conducted entirely through the familiar dial-pad interface that every mobile phone user already knows how to use. In a country like Nigeria where smartphone penetration reaches approximately 50 percent of mobile users, USSD-based payments provide critical market reach into the 50 percent of mobile users on feature phones and the substantial portion of smartphone owners who are on very limited data plans or in areas with poor internet connectivity. The Wireless USSD API provides a programmatic backend for USSD payment flows, connecting the carrier-delivered USSD session to the merchant's payment system. When a customer dials the merchant's USSD short code, the session is routed through Wireless's infrastructure to the merchant's API endpoint, which delivers menu prompts and processes customer inputs to complete the payment transaction. The merchant's API receives structured session data, can respond with text menus, and receives notification of successful payment completion. Card issuance through Wireless allows partner platforms to issue physical and virtual payment cards to their customers, extending the card infrastructure alongside the USSD capabilities. The combination serves different user segments: USSD for the feature phone and low-bandwidth segment, cards for internet-connected and smartphone users. A platform using Wireless can serve both groups from a single API relationship rather than integrating separate USSD and card infrastructure providers. Low-bandwidth optimization in Wireless's platform design reflects the reality that much of Nigeria's mobile internet infrastructure delivers variable data speeds. Payment flows and API responses are designed to function reliably even on 2G EDGE connections, which are still prevalent in rural areas and can appear in urban areas during network congestion. This optimization is not just a technical detail — it directly affects whether customers in rural Nigerian states and smaller towns can successfully complete transactions or are excluded from digital payment access. Spending controls on Wireless-issued cards allow partner platforms to configure transaction limits, merchant category restrictions, and per-day or per-period spending caps. For fintech platforms issuing expense cards or input finance cards with use restrictions, these controls ensure that issued cards are used within the intended scope. A cooperative issuing cards for agricultural input purchases can restrict card spending to approved input supplier merchant categories, preventing misuse of financed funds. Real-time authorization events from card transactions are delivered via webhooks to the partner platform, enabling immediate transaction visibility, fraud monitoring, and customer notification. For platforms operating at scale, real-time transaction events are essential for maintaining accurate account balances, detecting suspicious patterns, and delivering the instant transaction notifications that customers expect from modern fintech products. The dual-channel payment architecture of Wireless — covering both USSD for basic connectivity and cards for internet connectivity — reflects a practical response to Nigeria's heterogeneous digital infrastructure reality. Platforms that deploy only card or only online payment channels systematically exclude the portions of their potential market that don't have internet access or smartphone capability. Wireless's combined infrastructure removes this trade-off, enabling payment acceptance across the full user base a Nigerian platform serves.