In hindsight, it isn’t arduous to see the play Onafriq, the pan-African funds firm, was making when it expanded into Nigeria by buying Baxi in 2021.
Nigeria nonetheless relied closely on money, and Baxi already had greater than 90,000 brokers. Onafriq may enter with a ready-made distribution community as a substitute of spending years constructing one.
The timing appeared good, too. OPay and Moniepoint had begun building large agent networks in 2019, whereas PalmPay entered agent banking later. In 2021, Baxi was already one among Nigeria’s largest impartial agent networks, giving Onafriq an early lead over some newer opponents.
But the lead didn’t maintain. By the tip of 2024, PalmPay reportedly had more than 700,000 agents, whereas Moniepoint had over 800,000 point-of-sale (PoS) terminals. But as of 2025, Baxi had simply over 460,000 agents, paling as compared. In October, it lastly determined to shut down the enterprise, months after trying to sell Baxi.
Between the traces: Agent banking grew to become a scale recreation. Rivals poured cash into terminals, agent recruitment, and incentives, making it simpler to shut the distribution hole. At the identical time, brokers may work with a number of suppliers, making a big community much less defensible than it first appeared.
The economics additionally modified. More terminals entered the market a lot sooner than transaction volumes grew, so suppliers competed over the identical funds.
Meanwhile, account-to-account (A2A) transfers—direct financial institution funds—gave prospects one other method to transfer cash with out visiting an agent.
Onafriq’s try and promote Baxi earlier than shutting it down exhibits that the issue was larger than one unhealthy 12 months. The firm had already determined the agent enterprise not match the place it wished to place capital.
Zoom out: Onafriq purchased Baxi partly as a result of bodily distribution was scarce. Five years later, the market had lots. Being early gave Baxi a head begin, but it surely didn’t cease opponents from catching up and, finally, passing it.
