The first time I wanted to receive funds from abroad, I combed several apps, and the journey was excruciating. The founder of Looprail has a similar story.
Waiting through the familiar frustration of traditional cross-border transfers. High fees quietly deducted. Settlement times stretching into days that you can’t control.
Exchange rates change between “send” and “receive.” And when the money finally arrived, it came with a final disappointment. It was converted to cash, locked in a bank account, and stripped of real utility.
Even local payments had already evolved, and in many African markets, you can easily transfer from Moniepoint to OPay in an instant, even with digital checkouts. But the moment your money crosses borders, it falls into an outdated maze of correspondent banks and intermediaries.
For me, the problem was not sending money. The problem was what happened after it arrived.
That gap became the foundation of Looprail.
Seeing Remittance as Infrastructure, Not a Transaction
I began looking at remittance from a different angle and asking questions about what if remittance is more than a transaction but a rail. And here’s what I mean
What if money did not just arrive and sit idle in a bank account or get converted into cash? What if it could immediately pay bills, book travel, support local merchants, and circulate inside the economy?
That shift in thinking, from remittance service to payment infrastructure, changed everything.
Why Stablecoins Became the Answer
Stablecoins offered that path. They solved the core problems I experienced firsthand. They moved money instantly, not in days. They reduced fees from percentages to pennies. They offered transparency instead of hidden markups. Most importantly, they allowed money to remain digital and programmable rather than being trapped on arrival.
Stablecoins became the foundation of Looprail’s vision.
Building Without Capital, Only Conviction
For us, the first real challenge was not technology. It was people.
There was no funding. No guaranteed salaries. Just a vision and equity. Convincing talented people to join meant offering something deeper than compensation. It meant ownership in solving a systemic problem that affects millions of people.
That constraint became a filter. Everyone who joined believed deeply in the mission. Everyone was comfortable building in uncertainty. The team that emerged was aligned, resilient, and focused on building hard things properly.
Why Nigeria is the Proving Ground for us.
Looprail’s first corridor is in Nigeria, and the reason is simple. The country has one of the largest diaspora populations in the world and receives over $20 billion in remittances annually. At the same time, traditional remittance remains expensive, slow, and fragmented.
Our pre-launch focus is clear. Build belief before product. Validate demand through a growing waitlist. Then soft launch with a small group of testers and prove that the rails work at scale.
If it works in Nigeria, it can work anywhere.
Beyond Remittance, Toward a Financial Bridge
Looprail is not being built as a cheaper way to send money home. It is being built as a financial bridge between diaspora life and African economies.
The vision is simple. Send money home, and that money should immediately work. It should pay bills, support family, fund travel, and flow directly to local merchants. As more diaspora users adopt the platform, more merchants integrate. As utility grows, adoption accelerates. That is how remittance becomes infrastructure.
What Drives the Mission Forward
What excites me most is not valuation or headlines. It is product-market fit in its truest sense. A world where money sent from outside Africa does not just arrive, but actively powers local economies.
Nigeria’s financial services sector is experiencing unprecedented digital transformation, with traditional banks racing to match fintech innovation while maintaining regulatory compliance and operational stability.
To understand the infrastructure strategies driving this evolution, Fabunmi Raphael spoke with Olaitan Falolu, Head DevOps of the leading financial institute in Nigeria, whose seven-year career spans platform engineering at multiple tier-1 financial institutions.
Nigeria’s financial sector is undergoing massive digital transformation.
From your perspective leading DevOps at one of the leading commercial banks in Nigeria, what infrastructure challenges are banks facing that most people don’t see?
The biggest challenge is that Nigerian banks are essentially running two businesses simultaneously. We have traditional banking operations that require absolute stability and regulatory compliance, while also building fintech-style digital services that need to deploy features daily and scale instantly.
Most people see the mobile app or web interface, but behind that is infrastructure that must handle millions of transactions during peak periods like salary payment days when transaction volumes can spike 300% in a few hours. Our systems need to auto-scale seamlessly while maintaining the security and compliance standards that banking regulations demand.
The complexity isn’t just technical. We’re managing infrastructure that serves customers across Nigeria with varying network conditions, device capabilities, and usage patterns. A deployment strategy that works for Lagos connectivity doesn’t necessarily work for rural areas, so our platform architecture has to be resilient across these different operating environments.
What specific DevOps strategies have you implemented to address these scaling challenges?
The game changer is focusing on what I call “intelligent automation”—not just automating manual processes, but building systems that make smart decisions about resource allocation and deployment strategies.
– We implemented Azure DevOps pipelines with intelligent staging that automatically provisions testing environments that mirror production configurations exactly. This eliminated the configuration drift issues that were causing 30% of our deployment failures.
– The game-changer was integrating our monitoring stack—Dynatrace, Prometheus, and Grafana—directly into the CI/CD pipeline. Now our deployment system automatically validates performance metrics before promoting releases to production. If a deployment causes any degradation in response times or error rates, it automatically rolls back without human intervention.
– We also implemented what we call “feature flagging infrastructure” that allows us to deploy code to production but control feature availability at the infrastructure level. This means we can push updates during low-traffic periods and then enable features instantly when market conditions are optimal.
You’ve helped tier-1 financial institutions achieve 99.9% uptime across their digital banking platforms. In the Nigerian operating environment, that’s incredibly difficult.
What’s your approach to reliability?
Reliability in Nigerian banking infrastructure requires anticipating failure modes that don’t exist in other markets. Power infrastructure variability, network connectivity challenges, and the fact that digital banking services are essential infrastructure for millions of people create unique reliability requirements.
Our approach is built on redundancy at every layer. We run multi-region deployments across Azure availability zones, but we also maintain on-premises backup systems for critical functions. If cloud connectivity fails, customers can still access core banking services through alternative pathways.
The monitoring strategy is predictive rather than reactive. We’ve configured Dynatrace to identify performance patterns that typically precede system failures. When we see database query times increasing or memory utilization following specific patterns, our systems automatically scale resources and alert engineers before customers experience any impact.
We also implemented what I call “graceful degradation architecture.” During high-load periods or partial system failures, the platform automatically disables non-essential features while maintaining core banking functions. Customers might not be able to view detailed transaction histories during peak periods, but they can always check balances and make payments.
Security is obviously critical in banking. How do you integrate security into DevOps processes without slowing down deployment velocity?
Security integration has to be invisible to development teams, or they’ll find ways around it. We embedded security scanning using SNYK directly into Azure DevOps pipelines, so vulnerability assessment happens automatically during the build process. Developers never have to think about running security scans—they just get alerts if issues are detected.
The key insight was treating security as infrastructure code rather than a separate process. Our Terraform modules include security policy enforcement, network segmentation rules, and access control configurations. When engineers provision new resources, they automatically inherit security standards rather than having to implement them separately.
We also implemented automated compliance validation. Every deployment automatically checks configurations against CBN [Central Bank of Nigeria] requirements and international banking standards. If a deployment would create compliance issues, it fails automatically with specific guidance on what needs to be fixed.
This approach actually accelerated deployment velocity because engineers no longer have to wait for security reviews. They get immediate feedback during development, and they know that anything that passes pipeline validation will meet security and compliance requirements.
Cost optimization is crucial for Nigerian banks. How do you balance performance requirements with cost efficiency?
Cost optimization in banking infrastructure isn’t just about spending less money—it’s about spending money more intelligently to support business growth. We reduced cloud costs by 35%, but transaction processing capacity actually increased during the same period.
The strategy focuses on dynamic resource allocation based on actual usage patterns rather than peak capacity provisioning. Nigerian banking has very predictable transaction patterns—salary days, month-end processing, holiday periods—so we designed autoscaling policies that anticipate these patterns rather than just reacting to them.
We implemented intelligent caching layers that reduce database load during high-traffic periods. Instead of scaling database resources to handle peak loads, we cache frequently accessed data and serve it from high-performance Redis clusters. This provides better customer experience at lower infrastructure costs.
The biggest cost optimization came from eliminating unused resources. We implemented automated resource lifecycle management that provisions development and testing resources when needed and destroys them when projects complete.
This eliminated the “forgotten infrastructure” that was consuming significant budget without providing business value.
How do you see fintech competition affecting infrastructure strategies for traditional banks?
Fintech companies have forced traditional banks to adopt startup-style infrastructure thinking, but banks have advantages that fintechs don’t fully appreciate yet. Fintechs can build greenfield infrastructure optimized for specific use cases, but banks need infrastructure that supports both legacy systems and modern digital services.
The opportunity for banks is building platform foundations that enable fintech-style innovation velocity while maintaining the operational stability that regulatory compliance requires. This means investing in platform engineering capabilities rather than just application development teams.
We’re building what I call “fintech-ready infrastructure”—platform foundations that can support rapid feature development, A/B testing, and real-time personalization while maintaining the security and compliance standards that banking requires.
The banks that will succeed are those that recognize infrastructure as a competitive advantage rather than just operational overhead. When you can deploy features in hours instead of weeks, you can respond to customer feedback and market opportunities faster than competitors—even fintech startups.
What advice would you give to other financial institutions looking to optimize their DevOps capabilities?
Start with monitoring and observability before you optimize anything else. You can’t improve what you can’t measure accurately. Many banks are trying to optimize deployment processes without understanding their current performance baselines or failure patterns.
Invest in platform engineering teams as business enablers, not just technical support. The engineers who understand both infrastructure optimization and business requirements are the ones who deliver transformational results rather than just technical improvements.
Don’t try to implement everything simultaneously. We achieved our 40% deployment improvement through systematic optimization over six months, not a single massive change. Focus on eliminating the biggest bottlenecks first, then build additional capabilities on stable foundations.
Most importantly, treat security and compliance as infrastructure requirements rather than external constraints. When security is built into your platform architecture, it enables faster development rather than slowing it down.
Looking ahead, how do you see DevOps evolving in Nigerian financial services?
The next phase will be about intelligent infrastructure that makes decisions automatically based on business context, not just technical metrics.
We’re already implementing systems that automatically optimize resource allocation based on transaction patterns, customer behavior, and market conditions.
Cross-border expansion is driving demand for platform architectures that can adapt to different regulatory environments automatically. Nigerian banks expanding across Africa need infrastructure that can deploy the same applications while meeting different compliance requirements in each market.
The bigger opportunity is positioning Nigerian platform engineering expertise globally. The engineers who can maintain 99.9% uptime while optimizing costs in challenging operating environments bring capabilities that financial institutions worldwide need. Nigerian DevOps expertise isn’t just supporting local digital transformation—it’s creating competitive advantages that transcend geographic boundaries.
Olaitan Falolu is the Head DevOps of the leading financial institute in Nigeria, where he leads platform engineering initiatives supporting Nigeria’s digital banking transformation.
His expertise in Azure cloud optimization, security integration, and DevOps team leadership spans seven years of financial services infrastructure experience across Nigeria’s banking sector.
Most banks in Nigeria are built for high-profile customers.
The kind that get relationship managers, priority queues, and exclusive perks. The rest of us don’t really have a choice. We still keep our real money with traditional banks, while fintech apps handle quick transfers and small payments.
We trust fintechs for speed, but not always for stability.
The gap Bank78 MFB is trying to close.
Bank78 is saying: we are a bank too, but not your typical traditional bank. A digital-first bank that actually cares about the middle — professionals, founders, SMEs, and upwardly mobile Nigerians who earn well but don’t have ₦50 million sitting idle just to be treated properly.
Testing the Bank78 Experience
As part of our review process at African Tech Journal, our team downloaded the Bank78 app.
The first thing we noticed was how lightweight it was. For a banking app, the size was small, the interface clean, and the onboarding process largely seamless.
However, we did encounter a registration issue.
We reached out via Instagram and didn’t get a response for a day. At that point, we needed to be sure whether this was a system issue or just an oversight. The team tried other contact channels, and once we got through, the response was prompt and the issue was resolved.
Since then, transactions have been smooth and reliable.
To be honest, we don’t know what exactly they’re “serving” behind the scenes but Bank78 is clearly one to watch.
Prestige Without Exclusion
Bank78’s positioning isn’t accidental. Its Chairman, Bright Ajaegbu, alongside Director EviOghene Osifo-Whiskey, recognised something many banks missed: prestige in banking doesn’t have to mean exclusivity.
Their philosophy is simple: prestige made accessible.
What Bank78 Means for You as a Customer
For customers, Bank78’s promise is straightforward.
It means you don’t need to deposit ₦50 million to be treated well. It means you can access premium digital banking without special connections. It means you get the same privileges others enjoy without hidden rules.
Behind the scenes, Bank78 operates as a fully licensed and regulated bank, approved by the Central Bank of Nigeria and insured by the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation.
This isn’t a fintech experimenting with money: it’s a bank built for reliability first.
Bank78 represents a clear maturation of Nigeria’s digital banking ecosystem.
It proves that world-class financial infrastructure can be built locally.
It shows that mass affluent Nigerians deserve better experiences.
It demonstrates that technology, including AI, can enhance banking without dehumanizing it.
Most startups begin with market research, pitch decks, and investor meetings. Vendyz started with a gut punch: a significant loss to an online scammer.
For the average online entrepreneur in Nigeria, that’s not just money—it’s months of hustle, saved income, and deferred dreams. But instead of accepting it as “the cost of doing business” in Nigeria’s Wild West online marketplace, the Vendyz team asked a different question:
What if trust didn’t have to be a gamble?
That question sparked what would become one of Africa’s most authentic social commerce stories—a journey defined not by Silicon Valley playbooks, but by the messy, beautiful reality of building for Africans who trade on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook every single day.
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The Hard Truth: When Your Co-Founder Walks and the Market Doesn’t Care
Let’s get real about what “building from scratch” actually means.
Just as Vendyz started gaining momentum, their CTO and co-founder exited. Not after Series A. Not after product-market fit. Right when the foundation was being laid.
For a bootstrapped team funding operations personally, this wasn’t a minor setback—it was an existential crisis. There was no budget to hire senior engineers. No safety net of investor capital. Just a mission and a decision: fold or find another way.
They chose the latter. They found people willing to learn, trained them, and kept building.
But the market had other lessons waiting.
The Escrow Paradox
Here’s what nobody tells you about building in Nigeria: sometimes the problem you’re solving is real, but the market isn’t ready for your solution.
Vendyz launched as an escrow platform—a logical answer to the trust crisis in online transactions. The research made sense. The pain point was validated. Users agreed they needed protection.
But behavior told a different story.
People wanted safety, but they didn’t want process. They wanted protection, but they didn’t want to explain escrow to every buyer. They wanted trust, but they wanted it to feel as seamless as a regular bank transfer.
And quietly, competitors who started in escrow were pivoting away. No press releases. No public admissions. Just silent repositioning into other fintech verticals.
Vendyz could have followed them out the door. Instead, they did something harder: they stayed and adapted.
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The Pivot: Meeting Africans Where They Already Trade
The breakthrough came from watching how Africans actually buy and sell online.
While some trade through e-commerce platforms and Shopify stores, the overwhelming majority operate in WhatsApp groups, Instagram DMs, Facebook Marketplace, and TikTok comments.
Social commerce wasn’t a buzzword for Vendyz’s users—it was reality. Vendors were already building businesses in chat threads, managing inventory through phone galleries, and coordinating deliveries via voice notes.
So Vendyz made a critical decision: **instead of changing user behavior, build around it.**
They evolved from a standalone escrow platform into a social commerce infrastructure company—one that integrated direct payments, escrow for those who wanted it, and access to over 50 logistics providers, all while vendors continued trading exactly where they were comfortable.
The market validated the shift immediately. Africa’s social commerce market is projected to explode from $3.51 billion in 2024 to $9.43 billion by 2030 (16.2% CAGR). In Nigeria alone, it’s expected to nearly double from $2.04 billion in 2025 to $3.96 billion by 2030.
Vendyz wasn’t chasing a trend. They were building infrastructure for a revolution already happening in millions of DMs across the continent.
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The Tech Stack: From Manual Chaos to Automated Trust
The turning point came after the first few dozen transactions.
Manual coordination between buyers and sellers might work for 10 deals. Maybe 50. But at scale? Impossible.
That’s when Vendyz became a technology company, not just a payment facilitator.
The Build
They constructed an automated escrow system that held funds securely and released them only when both parties confirmed satisfaction—no human intervention required for happy paths, full support available for disputes.
Then they integrated the tools that turned them from early-stage startup to serious infrastructure:
– Korapay and Palmpay for payment processing
– Google Cloud for hosting and security
– Shipbubble for 50+ logistics provider integrations
– Tawk.to for live customer support
– GA4 and GTM for behavioral analytics
– Custom dashboards for real-time transaction monitoring
On the operations side, they built structured workflows through Google Sheets and Slack Workspace, ensuring product, design, operations, and marketing stayed aligned without expensive project management tools.
The Impact
The change was immediate and measurable:
– Transactions became faster
– Error handling improved dramatically
– Internal communication became seamless
– Customer trust skyrocketed
Users started describing Vendyz as “simple, safe, and easy to use”—the three words every fintech founder dreams of hearing in a market saturated with complexity.
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The Cultural Secret: Building for Behavior, Not Ideals
Here’s what separates Vendyz from most African tech startups: they never tried to “educate the market” out of its habits.
They didn’t build a fancy app and then wonder why adoption was low. They didn’t create workflows that required users to change how they already did business.
Instead, they met Africans exactly where they were:
The WhatsApp Marketplace
Recognizing that WhatsApp is Africa’s primary commerce platform, Vendyz built a verified vendor marketplace directly within WhatsApp. Sellers could list products, buyers could discover them, and transactions could happen without anyone leaving the app they were already in.
The Language
They kept communication simple, human, and personal. No corporate jargon. No fintech buzzwords. Just clear language that made sense to someone selling shoes from their apartment or a university student flipping tech gadgets.
The Process
Instead of forcing escrow on everyone, they offered direct pay for those who wanted speed and escrow for those who wanted protection. User choice, not company preference.
This cultural authenticity is why Vendyz has been able to grow organically in a market where most fintech startups burn millions on user acquisition.
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The Numbers: What Organic Growth Actually Looks Like
Since launching their MVP in mid-March 2025, Vendyz has achieved metrics that most funded startups would envy:
– 600+ verified buyers and sellers in active marketplace
– 500+ active users engaging regularly with the platform
– Strategic partnerships with Anchor, Korapay, PalmPay, and other fintech infrastructure players
But here’s what matters more than the numbers: Vendyz deliberately chose quality over vanity metrics.
They started with over 1,000 onboarded users. Then they refined their verification process and cleaned the database down to 600 verified, trustworthy participants.
Why? Because in a trust-based business, credibility > scale.
One scammer in your marketplace destroys more value than 100 legitimate users create. Vendyz understood this from Day 1.
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The Milestones That Matter
Every milestone at Vendyz tells a story of resilience over resources:
1. The WhatsApp Marketplace Launch
Creating a free, verified vendor marketplace inside WhatsApp wasn’t just product innovation—it was cultural adaptation. It proved that African vendors didn’t need to learn new platforms; platforms needed to meet them where they already were.
2. The ₦3M Transaction Milestone
Processing over ₦3 million organically within months of launch validated the core hypothesis: Africans want trust-based payments when executed with simplicity.
3. The Verification System
Choosing to reduce their user count from 1,000 to 600 verified participants was a defining moment. It signaled to the market that Vendyz prioritized safety over growth theater.
4. The Community Trust Signal
The most meaningful milestone? Organic referrals.
Users started recommending Vendyz without prompting. Vendors shared testimonials unpaid. Buyers referred friends naturally. That’s when Vendyz knew they’d built something real.
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The Lessons: What Vendyz Teaches African Founders
1. Start with Empathy, Not Features
Vendyz didn’t begin with “let’s build fintech.” They began with “we got scammed, and that needs to stop.” Real innovation starts with real pain.
2. Don’t Scale Noise; Scale Trust
It’s better to have 600 verified, engaged users than 6,000 inactive ones. Growth without trust eventually collapses.
3. Build Lean, But Build Consistently
Every milestone was achieved without external capital by focusing ruthlessly on user value and operational discipline.
4. Adapt Fast, But Stay True
The market shifted from escrow to direct pay, from app to WhatsApp, from standalone payments to full commerce infrastructure. But Vendyz’s mission—enabling safe online trade—never changed. That clarity created resilience.
5. Culture Drives Success
Building a team culture rooted in accountability, empathy, and clarity will always outperform even the best strategies. Vendyz’s team evolution from small founding group to full-function operation proves this.
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The Future: Building Africa’s Social Commerce Backbone
Vendyz isn’t done. In fact, they’re just warming up.
The Next 3 Years: Three Growth Pillars
1. Product Expansion
Launching Vendyz Storefronts—allowing any vendor to create a professional mini-store in minutes that integrates payments, delivery, and reviews. Think Shopify simplicity meets WhatsApp ubiquity.
2. Geographical Growth
Expanding to Ghana and Kenya first, where informal trade and social selling mirror Nigeria’s dynamics. The playbook is proven; now it’s about regional adaptation.
3. Financial Enablement
Deepening access to business tools like Virtual Business Accounts (VBA), enabling small sellers to transact with the credibility of structured businesses.
The Technology Vision
Vendyz is investing heavily in:
– Automation of vendor verification, payouts, and analytics
– Data systems that help vendors understand their customers
– AI-driven insights for inventory management and pricing
– Reputation scoring to build trust at scale
If Funding Comes
Vendyz has been approached by investors, but they’ve been selective. If capital arrives, priorities are clear:
2. Marketing and growth (vendor education, university ambassador programs)
3. Talent development (ensuring the team grows with the company)
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Why This Story Matters
Vendyz represents something bigger than a fintech startup.
They’re proof that:
✅ You can build trust-first technology without external funding
✅ Cultural adaptation beats market education
✅ Organic growth is possible when mission > hype
✅ African innovation often comes from lived experience, not imported playbooks
In a tech ecosystem obsessed with fundraising announcements and unicorn valuations, Vendyz is building the unsexy, essential infrastructure that enables thousands of everyday Africans to trade safely online.
They’re not chasing headlines. They’re opening doors.
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The Vendyz Playbook: Questions for Reflection
For every African entrepreneur reading this, ask yourself:
1. Are you building for the market you wish existed, or the one that actually does?
2. Have you truly met your users where they are, or are you asking them to meet you?
3. Are you measuring vanity metrics or building real trust?
4. Can you articulate your mission in one sentence that a street vendor would understand?
Vendyz can. Their mission is simple: Make online trade safe for everyday Africans.
Everything else—the tech, the partnerships, the pivots—flows from that clarity.
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Join the Movement
Vendyz isn’t just building a platform. They’re building the infrastructure for Africa’s next generation of digital vendors.
If you’re a vendor tired of trust issues, a buyer tired of scams, or an entrepreneur inspired by resilient building—Vendyz’s story is your invitation.
The future of African commerce isn’t happening in boardrooms alone. It’s happening in WhatsApp chats, Instagram DMs, Shopify stores, and communities of builders who refuse to accept “that’s just how things are.”
Vendyz is proof that another way is possible.
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Want to be part of Africa’s social commerce revolution? Follow Vendyz’s journey and join their verified marketplace. Because trust shouldn’t be a luxury—it should be infrastructure.
