UK-based Ceviant taps Nigeria’s growing fintech market

BY OLIVIA NNOROM

Ceviant, a UK-based financial technology company that offers transformative cash management solutions to emerging market businesses, has launched in Nigeria.

The company launched on Thursday after it went live with its website, it said in a statement. Nigeria is its first emerging market.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and largest economy with a GDP of US$441.5 billion as at 2021, has in the last few years witnessed a surge of investment in its fintech space which has birthed multiple African fintech Unicorns.

Nigeria is one of the four markets where much of the growth in Africa’s digital economy so far has been concentrated, according to a new report from Endeavor Nigeria, the leading community of high-impact entrepreneurs in Nigeria. The others are South Africa, Kenya and Egypt. The four markets make up 32 percent of Africa’s population, 51 percent of the continent’s mobile network connections, 50 percent of its professional developers and 51 percent of its GDP, said the report, “The Inflection Point: Africa’s Digital Economy is Poised to Take Off”.

Nigeria is also one of the two African countries on the list of top five fastest-growing markets for GitHub contributions, alongside Egypt, the report said.

An FCA regulated company in the UK, Ceviant said it has received Approval In Principle licences in Nigeria. It has also been awarded ISO accreditation and recently been accepted to join the SWIFT partner programme to create real value for customers while streamlining their multi-banking transactions to improve efficiency. The company also said it has secured four new banking partners in Nigeria and plans to further expand its partner network across Africa, where the Endeavor report projects that the market size of the digital economy could top $712 billion by 2050 from its current $115 billion, and the UAE.

Ceviant, which describes itself as “a financial technology company that delivers a broad range of treasury and trade solutions to a large and diversified client base, including corporates & multinationals, SMEs, importers and exporters”, acts as a B2B SaaS (Software as a Service) platform that simplifies liquidity management for corporates. The company says it has developed a proprietary cloud-based treasury management software that enables businesses to aggregate all their banking payments in one place.

Idris Alubankudi Saliu, founder of Ceviant, said the company, though new, is a key player in the market and aims “to solve the complexity around the way African companies traditionally manage their banking solutions by providing our integrated services in one place”.

“Corporates of all sizes have many challenges, including being able to manage their cash and access working capital and trade finance solutions to support their operations,” Saliu said.

He said Ceviant simplifies processes and facilitates financial inclusion, with compliance and security at the heart of everything it does.

“This is a large and generally untapped market for our products and services, and we are extremely excited for customers to interact with our newly functional website. We look forward to the future and creating value for our stakeholders,” he said.

Ceviant’s newly designed website, https://www.ceviant.co.uk/, displays the company’s suite of products and services including treasury management, cash visibility, and digitising trade finance. The company said the website would ensure information is easily accessible for key stakeholders. It further said it was developing the most direct API connectivity to banks in emerging markets which will allow clients to connect with business services and capabilities outside of traditional banking channels.