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.

The Nigerian private sector remained in growth territory at the start of the second quarter of the year as customer numbers and market demand continued to strengthen.

That said, the impacts of higher fuel costs as a result of the war in the Middle East were felt again, pushing up prices and reportedly limiting expansions in new orders and business activity. The headline figure derived from the survey is the Stanbic IBTC Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI).

Readings above 50.0 signal an improvement in business conditions on the previous month, while readings below 50.0 show a deterioration.

The headline PMI ticked up to 52.4 in April from 51.9 in March, above the 50.0 no-change mark for the third month running and signalling a solid strengthening in the health of the private sector. The rate of improvement was slightly greater than that seen in the previous survey period.

Muyiwa Oni, Head of Equity Research West Africa at Stanbic IBTC Bank commented: “The health of Nigeria’s private sector improved in April – remaining above the 50-points growth threshold for the third consecutive month – as new orders increased in line with higher customer numbers and rising demand even as price pressures remain prevalent.

Accordingly, the headline PMI increased to 52.4 points in April from 51.9 points seen in March. Despite the improvement in new orders, we understand that lingering inflationary pressures limited the pace of expansion. Notably, companies increased their selling prices in April to the highest level since December 2024 in response to rising fuel and raw material costs.

Staff costs also increased modestly as some companies increased their staff pay so as to help them with increasing transportation fares. Business expectations also improved in April compared to March as businesses plan to expand their operations through the opening of new branches, stock building, and entry into new markets.

“The improved start of the second quarter of the year by Nigerian businesses continues to support our view of improved growth expectations in 2026 relative to 2025. Hence, we still maintain our expectation that the Nigerian economy is likely to grow by 4.22% y/y in 2026, from 3.87% y/y in 2025. We estimate the non-oil sector’s growth at 4.24% y/y in 2026, from 3.71% y/y in 2025, likely driven primarily by services, which we see growing by 5.64% y/y in 2026 (vs 2025: 4.14% y/y).

The government’s continuous investment attraction across oil & gas, solid minerals, electricity, agriculture and general manufacturing should continue to support sentiment on production activity. However, the oil sector’s growth is likely to moderate to 3.01% y/y (vs 2025: 8.50% y/y), as we now expect crude oil production (including condensates) to average 1.70m bpd, from 1.64m bpd in 2025.”

Improving demand conditions meant that new orders continued to rise, albeit with the rate of growth softening amid inflationary pressures. Business activity also increased, and at a solid pace that was slightly faster than that seen in March.

Here too, however, companies mentioned that rising prices had limited the pace of growth. Activity rose in three of the four monitored sectors, the exception being services. Anecdotal evidence suggested that prices were often driven higher by increased fuel costs due to the war in the Middle East.

Purchase prices increased rapidly, with the rate of inflation little-changed from March’s 15-month high. Meanwhile, staff costs rose modestly as companies in some cases increased pay to help workers deal with higher transportation fares. The pass through of increased input costs to customers resulted in a further sharp rise in output prices, with the rate of inflation quickening to the fastest since December 2024.

Companies took on extra staff in April in response to rising workloads, but the rate of job creation was only marginal and the softest in three months. Some firms reported that staff shortages had been behind the latest accumulation of backlogs of work, while others cited customer payment delays and issues securing raw materials. Outstanding business increased for the third consecutive month in April.

Further efforts were made to secure materials, with purchasing activity increasing for the seventeenth month running in April. Stocks of purchases also rose amid improving customer demand, and at a marked pace that was the sharpest in five months.

Where companies placed orders for materials, they often made sure to pay on time in order to secure deliveries. As a result, supplier lead times shortened again, albeit to the least extent in 2026 so far.

Business sentiment ticked higher in April, with companies often citing plans to expand operations. Half of all respondents predicted that their output will increase over the next 12 months.

L–R: Austen Osokpor, Head, Marketing and Corporate Communications, Ecobank Nigeria; Daniel Taiwo, Leader, Platform School Chess Team and winners of the 2025 edition; Prince Adeyinka Adewole, Vice President, Nigeria Chess Federation; and Ambesh Kumar, Head of Marketing, SchoolMate Nigeria, at the press conference announcing the Ecobank National Schools’ Team Chess Championship 2026 in Lagos.

All arrangements have been concluded for the 2026 Ecobank National Schools’ Team Chess Championship, organised in partnership with the Nigeria Chess Federation (NCF) and SchoolMate.

The championship will hold from 7–8 May 2026 at the Ecobank Pan African Centre (EPAC), Lagos, and is expected to feature about 1,500 pupils and students from 300 schools nationwide.

Speaking ahead of the third edition of the tournament, Ecobank’s Segment Head for Education, Faith and Social Services, Adekunle Adewuyi, said the bank remains committed to scaling the championship as a pathway for developing Nigeria’s next generation of intellectual and strategic leaders.

According to him, the championship has evolved into a strong national platform for nurturing talent and promoting critical thinking among young Nigerians.

“This championship has become a leading national platform for identifying and nurturing emerging chess talents. Chess is a powerful educational tool; it sharpens critical thinking, problem-solving and discipline. Through this initiative, we are preparing young Nigerians not just for competition, but for leadership roles in the future,” Adewuyi said.

He described the tournament as a rapidly growing, award-winning scholastic competition that attracts thousands of students annually and promotes intellectual development while fostering future chess grandmasters.

Reflecting on previous editions, Adewuyi noted the significant growth in participation: “Last year’s edition recorded massive growth, with over 2,500 students from 450 schools participating. We are confident this year’s edition will surpass that milestone.”

Also speaking, Vice President of the Nigeria Chess Federation, Prince Adeyinka Adewole Samuel, said the championship aligns with global standards set by the International Chess Federation (FIDE), which encourages countries to organise structured school-level competitions.

According to him, the tournament targets primary and secondary school students aged 7–18, as part of a deliberate strategy to build a sustainable pipeline of future grandmasters.

Prince Adeyinka disclosed that about 150 primary schools and 150 secondary schools are expected to participate this year, with each school fielding five players, bringing the total number of participants to approximately 1,500 students from about 15 states. He added that the competition will feature a ₦20 million prize pool.

He also revealed that enhanced measures have been introduced to improve event delivery, including strict player eligibility checks, enhanced crowd control, and the deployment of 50 trained arbiters to guarantee fairness and transparency.

Highlighting the impact of the initiative, Prince Adeyinka noted that Nigerian students who emerged from the Ecobank championship have excelled at continental competitions.

“The growth has been phenomenal. When Nigeria competes at continental tournaments, many of the standout players are alumni of the Ecobank championship. We won a gold medal last year in Uganda, and that success is strongly linked to what Ecobank has done,” he said.

On his part, Marketing Head of SchoolMate Nigeria, Ambesh Kumar, said the company partnered with the initiative to support youth development through education and sport, noting that chess helps children build discipline, focus and strategic thinking.

“We are passionate about quality education for children, and we see this tournament as a veritable means of advancing that cause. Last year, we distributed books to the children, and this year marks our first involvement as a co-sponsor. SchoolMate has operated in Nigeria for several years, and we see this chess championship as a meaningful way of giving back to society,” Kumar stated.

The Ecobank National Schools’ Team Chess Championship continues to grow as a nationwide platform for discovering young talents while equipping students with confidence, teamwork, leadership and strategic skills essential for future success.