When Nigeria restricted international spending on naira-denominated bank cards, cutting consumers off from products and services priced in dollars, two entrepreneurs saw the disruption as a business opportunity, defied the odds and invested ₦5 million to build what is now Cardtonic.
In a recent interview with Business Insider Africa, Kayode Faturoti and Usman Balogun reflected on how disruption in Nigeria’s payments market exposed a wider gap in Africa’s digital economy.
The opportunity prompted them to invest ₦5 million in Cardtonic, despite having no guarantee that the business would succeed.
Over time, they bootstrapped the company into a platform that, according to the founders, processed more than ₦100 billion in transactions before raising institutional capital.
Their experience also led them to launch Breet, a cryptocurrency-to-cash platform designed to remove the delays, complexity and risks associated with peer-to-peer transactions.
