• PalmPay plans to enter South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, and Tanzania by late 2025
• The fintech already handles over 15 million daily transactions in Nigeria
• It will face strong competition from MTN, Wave, TymeBank, and Airtel in new markets

PalmPay, a Nigerian digital payment company backed by China’s Transsnet Group, is pushing ahead with its regional expansion plan. After securing a firm grip on its home market, the fintech now aims to enter South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, and Tanzania before the end of 2025.

The move was announced on Wednesday, May 7, by PalmPay CEO Chika Nwosu and marks a strategic milestone for the company, which hopes to become a major player in Africa’s mobile money space.

The company will be entering highly competitive markets. In South Africa, it will go up against MTN’s MoMo, which has 11 million users, and TymeBank, which serves nearly 9 million. In Côte d’Ivoire, PalmPay will face Wave, the dominant force in the country’s digital payment sector, holding 70% market share and more than 20 million active accounts. In Uganda, MTN and Airtel are already firmly established as mobile money leaders.

Despite this, PalmPay is betting on the strength of its operations to break through. In Nigeria, its core market, the company processes over 15 million transactions daily and serves a user base of 35 million active customers. On average, each user carries out 50 transactions per month, ranging from money transfers to airtime purchases. The company boasts a 99.5% success rate, reflecting the reliability of its platform.

PalmPay is already present in Ghana and Kenya, and its growing presence on the continent gives it a solid foundation to build trust in new territories.

The expansion comes as Africa’s digital payments sector continues to grow rapidly, fueled by improved technology, wider financial inclusion, and rising demand for digital solutions. In 2023, instant payment systems across the continent recorded a record 49 billion transactions, worth a total of $1.036 trillion, according to a report by AfricaNenda, the World Bank, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

The same report noted an average annual growth rate of 37% in transaction volume from 2019 to 2023, showing the strong momentum driving Africa’s fintech revolution.