As part of efforts to promote SMEs and strengthen support for operators in the informal sector, Unity Bank has continued to empower small-scale traders and shop owners across Nigeria through its initiative called Shop Collateralised Facility (SHOCOF).

SHOCOF is an innovative loan product, and Unity Bank has disbursed over N500 million to beneficiaries, significantly improving access to financing, and further driving financial inclusion.

Originally introduced as a targeted intervention for traders in South-East Nigeria, SHOCOF quickly gained traction and broad acceptance for its flexibility and tailored structure, prompting the Bank to expand the product nationwide.

Under the initiative, eligible customers can use their shops as collateral to access financing. The product simplifies access to credit by leveraging the commercial value and stability associated with fixed business locations, enabling traders to secure funds without the stringent collateral requirements associated with traditional lending structures.

The facility provides working capital support that enables beneficiaries to restock goods, increase inventory turnover, improve cash flow, and respond more effectively to market demand.

Recent reports indicate that more than 80 per cent of Nigeria’s small businesses operate informally, with many relying on personal savings and informal borrowing channels due to limited access to Bank credit. SHOCOF was developed to bridge this gap through a lending model tailored to the realities of market traders and small shop owners.

Speaking on the impact of the product, the Group Head, Risk Management, Unity Bank, Olusegun Oladipo, said the Bank recognised the need for financing solutions aligned with the realities of informal sector businesses.

“SHOCOF was created to address a critical gap within the small business ecosystem by providing access to credit through a structure that traders can satisfactorily meet without much ado,” Oladipo said.

He added: “By recognising the value and stability embedded in their businesses, we have been able to support traders with the capital required to sustain and grow their operations.”

Also commenting, Divisional Head, SME & Retail Banking, Unity Bank, Adenike Abimbola, said the nationwide adoption of the product reflects proper market segmentation to meet the growing demand for accessible financing among small business owners.

“What started as a targeted intervention in the Southeast, which quickly gained momentum because the product directly addressed the realities of everyday traders,” Abimbola said.

Over the years, Unity Bank has continued to introduce targeted solutions aimed at empowering entrepreneurs, including its flagship Yanga account package developed to support female entrepreneurs.

The Bank reaffirmed that expanding access to capital for underserved business segments remains critical to boosting trade, strengthening local economies, and driving sustainable economic growth.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has emphasised the critical role of State Governments in ensuring a successful transition to an Inflation Targeting (IT) monetary policy framework, stressing that sustained price stability can be achieved only through coordinated fiscal discipline across all tiers of government.

Speaking during an engagement with sub‑national stakeholders, facilitated through the Nigerian Governors Forum Secretariat, the Deputy Governor in charge of the Economic Policy Directorate, Dr. Muhammad Sani Abdullahi, described the move toward inflation targeting as a shift to a more rule‑based, transparent and forward‑looking monetary framework that demands close collaboration with state authorities.

According to him, while the Central Bank retains responsibility for deploying monetary policy tools to control inflation, fiscal actions, particularly at the sub-national level, play a significant role in shaping inflation outcomes within a federal system such as Nigeria’s.

Dr. Abdullahi explained that inflation targeting is fundamentally about managing expectations, warning that uncoordinated or expansionary fiscal actions by State Governments could either reinforce or undermine monetary policy signals.

He noted that States influence inflation through multiple channels, including borrowing decisions, domestic debt accumulation, expenditure patterns, wage bills, capital project execution, salary arrears, overdrafts, contractor financing, and weak co-ordination on the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) receipts, cash management and debt servicing.

“In an inflation‑targeting regime, persistent, unpredictable or expansionary fiscal behaviour at the sub‑national level can significantly undermine price stability,” he said.

The Deputy Governor emphasised that the absence of fiscal dominance, where government borrowing pressures compel the central bank to monetise deficits, is a core prerequisite for successful inflation targeting. He noted that this principle applies not only at the federal level but equally to State Governments.

He urged States to reduce reliance on overdrafts and short‑term financing, ensure that borrowing decisions align with debt sustainability thresholds, improve budget realism and revenue forecasting, prioritise expenditure, and better synchronise fiscal calendars with prevailing macroeconomic conditions.

Under the inflation‑targeting framework, Dr. Abdullahi outlined four key responsibilities for State Governments: maintaining fiscal discipline and predictability; pursuing responsible borrowing aligned with medium‑term fiscal frameworks; strengthening coordination on cash and debt management; and enhancing internally generated revenue mobilisation. He warned that unplanned expenditures, excessive supplementary budgets and unsustainable debt accumulation could trigger liquidity shocks and elevate inflationary risks.

He reiterated that inflation targeting is a collective national commitment to stability, credibility and long-term prosperity. While the CBN remains accountable for delivering price stability, he said the framework’s success ultimately depends on disciplined fiscal behaviour across all tiers of government.

By strengthening coordination and embedding price stability as a shared objective, he added, State Governments would support the new framework and lay firmer foundations for growth, job creation and improved social welfare.

Earlier, in his opening remarks, the Director, Monetary Policy Department, Dr. Victor Oboh, described inflation targeting as a “win‑win framework” that benefits households, businesses and governments by anchoring inflation expectations, enhancing policy credibility and reducing macroeconomic uncertainty.

He stressed that price stability cannot be achieved through monetary policy alone, particularly in a federal system, noting that sub‑national fiscal operations, especially spending, borrowing and cash‑flow decisions have direct implications for liquidity conditions and inflation outcomes.

According to Dr. Oboh, the engagement was designed to foster mutual understanding, promote open dialogue and deepen collaboration between the apex bank and State Governments on the roles, expectations and coordination mechanisms required for the success of inflation targeting.

He further noted that sub‑national governments play a pivotal role in Nigeria’s macroeconomic landscape, as decisions on wage policies, capital spending, debt accumulation and revenue mobilisation directly shape aggregate demand and inflation dynamics.

The Director reaffirmed that the engagement forms part of the bank’s broader partnership with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) and State Governments, anchored on a shared commitment to embedding macroeconomic stability as a collective national objective.

Delivering a goodwill message on behalf of the Director-General, NGF, Dr. Abdullateef Shittu, the Executive Director, Policy, Strategy and Research at the NGF, Prof. Olalekan Yunusa, commended the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Bank’s leadership for what he described as the strategic foresight behind the engagement, particularly the decision to involve sub‑national fiscal authorities at an early stage of the transition process.

He noted that the shift from a monetary-targeting framework to inflation targeting reflects a deliberate commitment to price stability as the central anchor of economic policy. He added that sustainable macroeconomic stability cannot be achieved through monetary policy alone and requires disciplined coordination across all tiers of government.

The engagement featured a detailed presentation on Nigeria’s transition to inflation targeting. Participants drawn from over 20 states of the Federation, comprising Commissioners of Finance and Economic Planning, Accountant Generals, Permanent Secretaries, State Statistician-Generals and Directors amongst others, commended the CBN’s reform agenda, particularly the transition to inflation targeting, and reaffirmed their commitment to supporting the Bank’s efforts.

L–R: Seun Ogundolapo, Head, Trade, Transaction Banking, Stanbic IBTC Bank; Bukola Arabome, Lead Thinker, Targfit Experiential Limited; Jesuseun Fatoyinbo, Head, Transaction Banking, Stanbic IBTC Bank; Victory Olumuyiwa, Global Head of Treasury & Investor Relations, Sun King; Yinka Ogunnubi, Group Treasury Manager, Corporation for Africa & Overseas; and Joyce Dimkpa, Head, Client Coverage, Corporate & Investment Banking, Stanbic IBTC Bank, at the 2026 Global Trade Review (GTR) West Africa Conference, held recently in Lagos.

Stanbic IBTC Bank, a subsidiary of Stanbic IBTC Holdings and a member of Standard Bank Group, has reaffirmed its commitment to advancing trade and economic growth in West Africa following the successful conclusion of GTR West Africa 2026, where the Bank served as lead sponsor. The two-day conference, which was held on 22 and 23 April 2026 at the Eko Convention Centre, Lagos, brought together policymakers, financial institutions, corporates and fintech players to discuss the evolving landscape of regional and global trade.

The event attracted over 400 delegates from more than 200 organisations, spanning sectors including banking, fintech, agribusiness and logistics; underscoring its position as a critical platform for shaping trade finance dialogue in the region.

The conference opened with a keynote address by Tedd George, Founder & Chief Narrative Officer, Kleos Advisory Ltd, focused on harnessing improving macroeconomic stability to drive sustainable trade growth across West Africa. Subsequent sessions explored export diversification, supply chain finance and agribusiness-led trade, supported by practical case studies highlighting real-world applications.

Day two centred on digital trade and financial inclusion, with discussions on Africa’s mobile-first economy and contributions from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Digital Standards Initiative, which emphasised the importance of accelerating the digitisation of global trade finance.

Stanbic IBTC Bank’s participation followed closely on the heels of Standard Bank Group’s engagement at the GTR Africa Conference in Cape Town, reinforcing the Group’s pan-African approach to advancing trade and financial integration across key markets.

Commenting on the Bank’s role at the conference, Jesuseun Fatoyinbo, Head of Transaction Banking at Stanbic IBTC Bank, said the institution remains focused on delivering innovative solutions that respond to the shifting needs of businesses engaged in trade.

“At Stanbic IBTC Bank, we are steadfast in our commitment to driving economic growth through innovative transaction banking solutions. The trade finance landscape is evolving rapidly, and it is our responsibility to continuously adapt and strengthen our offerings to support our clients,” Fatoyinbo said.

“We understand the unique challenges faced by exporters and importers, particularly within agribusiness, and provide tailored solutions that simplify trade finance, enabling businesses to focus on growth and productivity.”

Also reflecting on the conference, Eric Fajemisin, Executive Director, Corporate and Transaction Banking, Stanbic IBTC Bank, highlighted the strategic importance of GTR West Africa to the region’s trade ecosystem.

“We leave this year’s GTR even more inspired as always, by the quality of engagement and the opportunities identified; and more committed than ever to enabling trade and economic development across Nigeria and the wider West African region. Trade finance is not peripheral to development, it is fundamental to it,” Fajemisin said.

Delegates from Stanbic IBTC Bank and Standard Bank Group contributed actively to the programme. Adedayo Adesanmi, Senior Vice-President, Structured Trade Finance, Standard Bank Group, shared insights on scaling supply chain finance and strengthening domestic value chains, while identifying cross-border growth opportunities.

In a dedicated agribusiness case study session, Seun Ogundolapo, Head of Trade Transaction Banking, Stanbic IBTC Bank, alongside Sreenivas Alagonda, Chief Financial Officer, Robust International Commodities, examined the practical delivery of structured commodity trade finance solutions.

The conference also welcomed senior trade finance leaders from across the Group, including Prince Baffour Agyei, Acting Head, Trade Working Capital, Stanbic Bank Ghana; Shunker Amish, Head, Transaction Banking Trade Distribution & Syndication, Standard Bank Group; and Joseph Anagblah, Head, Sales, Transaction Banking, Stanbic Bank Ghana; reinforcing the Group’s strong pan-African collaboration and continued support for the GTR platform.

As lead sponsor, Stanbic IBTC Bank hosted clients and stakeholders throughout the conference, facilitating high-level engagement, knowledge sharing and cross-sector networking. Through thought leadership panels and practical case studies, the Bank demonstrated its continuing focus on expanding access to trade finance and supporting businesses of all sizes.

Stanbic IBTC Bank remains committed to strengthening the trade finance ecosystem in Nigeria and across West Africa; helping businesses navigate complexity, unlock new opportunities and thrive in an increasingly interconnected global economy.

Stanbic IBTC is strengthening its position as a trusted leader in home financing in Nigeria through its ongoing partnership with the Ministry of Finance Incorporated Real Estate Investment Fund (MREIF). The organisation’s Banking business continues to help professionals, entrepreneurs, and married couples in Nigeria and the diaspora achieve home-ownership with greater ease and confidence.

In a market where housing supply significantly lags demand and traditional mortgage penetration remains low, Stanbic IBTC Bank is enabling more eligible Nigerians with the financial capacity to take the important step toward ownership. The Bank focuses on removing common barriers through clear processes and dedicated support.

The MREIF product offers highly attractive terms, including a fixed interest rate of 9.75%; facilities up to ₦100 million; and flexible repayment periods of up to 20 years. These features are well-suited to both consistent professional incomes and business owners.

Clients benefit from Stanbic IBTC’s comprehensive range of services, which covers pre-qualification, documentation support (including mixed-income scenarios), digital verification, and clear communication throughout.

Many applications are now progressing smoothly, with completion within three to four weeks, subject to the provision of required documents. This practical approach has made the process far more accessible for Nigerians both at home and in the diaspora.

As more professionals secure homes in high-growth areas, couples build family stability, and entrepreneurs expand their asset base, the positive impact is becoming increasingly visible. Stanbic IBTC Bank’s consistent focus on transparency, efficiency, and client support is helping to make homeownership a realistic and rewarding choice for more Nigerians ready to build long-term wealth.

The Bank has achieved notable successes through the MREIF scheme, with many clients completing seamless ownership transitions, securing properties in strategic locations, and effectively converting rental expenses into valuable equity-building assets.

Passpoint, the financial infrastructure company building the orchestration layer for cross-border financial operations, today announced its formal positioning as the financial orchestration layer for Africa, Europe, and the G20.

The announcement marks a defining moment for a company that has spent the past several years building the infrastructure layer that the African and global payment ecosystem has been missing: not another gateway, not another PSP, but the governed control plane that sits above the rails and makes fragmented markets operable as one.
Passpoint today processes millions of dollars in annualised payment volume across more than 300 merchants in 16 corridors spanning Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, the XOF region, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The platform is live, scaled, and used by fintechs, enterprises, gaming operators, remittance providers, marketplaces, and SaaS platforms building and operating across the intersection of African and global payment markets.

The Infrastructure Gap Passpoint Was Built to Close
Africa’s payment infrastructure has developed market by market, producing a continent of powerful but fragmented rails. M-Pesa in Kenya.

The NIP interbank network in Nigeria. Mobile money operators across francophone West Africa. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) system in South Africa. Each rail solves a real problem in its specific market.

None of them solve the problem that scaling businesses face when they need to operate across all of them simultaneously, while managing compliance in multiple jurisdictions, FX across multiple currencies, and settlement across multiple time zones.
The businesses attempting to solve this problem through a patchwork of individual provider integrations face a compounding operational burden: engineering teams spending 30 to 50 percent of their payment-related capacity on maintenance rather than product development, finance teams manually reconciling settlement data across multiple provider dashboards, compliance teams managing separate regulatory frameworks per market, and treasury teams with no unified visibility into liquidity positions across currencies and corridors.
Passpoint was built to replace the patchwork with a single, governed infrastructure layer. A single API integration provides access to every major African payment method alongside G20 rails, with intelligent routing across providers in real time, compliance logic embedded at the transaction layer rather than managed as a parallel manual process, FX management at institutional rates across African and global currency pairs, and unified settlement and reconciliation across all markets and currencies through a single operational interface.
“The payments infrastructure challenge in Africa is not about moving money,” said Kelechi Uchegbulem, Co-Founder and CEO of Passpoint. “Every gateway moves money. The challenge is governing it: routing intelligently across fragmented rails, staying compliant across jurisdictions that do not share regulatory frameworks, managing FX exposure across currencies that global providers do not understand deeply enough, and settling predictably across markets that operate on different timescales. We built Passpoint to be the layer that governs all of it. Not a tool you add to your stack. The infrastructure your stack runs on.”

What Passpoint Orchestrates
Passpoint’s financial orchestration layer provides six core capabilities through a single integration.
Intelligent payment routing selects the optimal path for every transaction at transaction time, based on real-time success rate data, cost, settlement speed, FX efficiency, and compliance status across available providers. Automatic fallback logic executes when primary routing paths fail, before merchants or customers see a failure notification.
Embedded compliance applies jurisdiction-specific regulatory logic, including KYC requirements, AML screening, transaction monitoring, and reporting obligations, automatically at the point of transaction processing.

Passpoint holds direct licences from the Central Bank of Nigeria and operates under FINTRAC in Canada, with PSD2-compliant infrastructure across 24 EU countries and the United Kingdom.
Multi-currency treasury management provides businesses with real-time visibility into multi-currency balance positions, institutional FX sourcing across African and G20 currency pairs, and control over conversion timing, replacing the passive FX absorption model of standard gateway settlement with active treasury management.
Unified settlement and reconciliation consolidates settlement data across all providers, markets, currencies, and payment methods into a single reporting layer, eliminating the manual reconciliation overhead of managing multiple provider relationships.
Real-time operational control gives finance, operations, and technical teams full visibility into payment activity, routing decisions, settlement positions, and compliance status across all markets through a single dashboard and API.

A New Category: Financial Orchestration
Passpoint’s announcement is as much a category creation as it is a product announcement. The company is positioning financial orchestration as a distinct infrastructure layer, separate from and above the payment gateway category that has defined African fintech infrastructure for the past decade.
“The businesses building at the frontier of African and global commerce are not asking for a better gateway,” said Adejuwon Oyebanjo, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Passpoint. “They are asking for control. Control over how their payments are routed. Control over their FX exposure. Control over their compliance posture across multiple regulatory environments. Control over their settlement and their cash position at any given moment. That is what orchestration means in practice: not moving money from A to B, but governing every dimension of the financial operation that sits between A and B. Passpoint gives businesses that control through a single integration, and that changes the economics of operating across African and global markets in ways that individual provider relationships simply cannot.”
The distinction between orchestration and gateway infrastructure has direct commercial implications. Businesses that have made the transition from multi-provider gateway models to Passpoint’s orchestration layer report meaningful improvements across multiple dimensions: higher transaction success rates through intelligent routing and fallback, lower effective FX costs through institutional rate access and conversion timing control, reduced engineering maintenance overhead through consolidated integration, faster market entry through pre-built compliance and rail infrastructure in new corridors, and significantly reduced finance team overhead through unified reconciliation.

Built for Africa. Designed for Global Scale.
Passpoint operates at the intersection of two infrastructure realities: the complexity of African payment markets, where fragmentation, regulatory variance, and FX challenges create operational burdens that most global infrastructure was not built to handle, and the standards of global financial systems, where reliability, compliance, and auditability are non-negotiable requirements for enterprise-grade operations.
The platform’s corridor coverage spans the highest-priority markets for businesses operating at the African-global intersection.

In Africa: Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, and Guinea. Globally: 24 EU countries, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each corridor is supported by direct rail access, licensed operational infrastructure, and compliance logic specific to the regulatory environment of that market.
“We are not a European infrastructure company that has added African payment methods to a global platform,” said Uchegbulem. “And we are not an African payment company that has bolted on some international capabilities. We built Passpoint from the ground up for the specific operational reality of businesses that need to work across both worlds simultaneously. That is a different design problem than either of those starting points, and it required a different kind of infrastructure to solve.”

Customer Traction and Market Validation
Passpoint’s current merchant base spans the verticals where African and global payment complexity is most acute: fintechs building cross-border payment products, gaming operators collecting deposits and processing withdrawals across African markets, remittance operators running Africa-to-Europe and Africa-to-North America corridors, SaaS platforms collecting subscription revenue from African subscriber bases, marketplaces disbursing to large African seller and worker populations, and enterprises managing cross-border supplier payments across African and global markets.
The platform’s annualised payment volume reflects the scale of the infrastructure problem it is solving: billions of dollars in cross-border financial flows that previously moved through fragmented, manually managed, operationally expensive payment infrastructure, now governed through a single, intelligent, unified control plane.

About Passpoint
Passpoint is the financial orchestration layer for Africa, Europe, and the G20. The company unifies payments, compliance, liquidity, and settlement into one governed control plane, enabling businesses to operate across African and global markets through a single integration without rebuilding their infrastructure for every new corridor.
With operations spanning 16 corridors across Africa, Europe, the United Kingdom, China, and the United States, the company holds direct licences from the Central Bank of Nigeria, operates under FINTRAC in Canada, holds a Virtual Asset Service Provider licence from the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Poland, and provides PSD2-compliant infrastructure across 24 EU countries and the United Kingdom.