In 2019, offline payments was not sexy. I remember when we went to do the research then, my team came back and said, 'Tosin, we went to the market. This thing is everywhere.' They were worried that how's the market going to take it? COVID accelerated it. Because COVID now made people simply realize I can't go to banks to withdraw cash or the ATM. I want to be able to withdraw cash. And now it's what shot up agency banking. So, overnight, agents popped up everywhere. So, I mean, we've fought tooth and nail to ensure that we provide great services. Certainly coming from being Nigerian means hiring Nigerians, means building it from Nigeria. One of the things that gives me joy today is the fact that we are lending to more and more smaller businesses. Businesses that are just looking for 500,000, 1 million naira. It doesn't have to be every day, you know, one customer or 50 million customer. Because I think that is where true financial inclusion is coming from.
Welcome to The Builders, which is Nidobacity's podcast. And today I have the great honor. And remember I keep telling you guys that we are going to bring you all sorts of entrepreneurs at every stage in their entrepreneurial journey. Today's guest is a superstar, I think, in what he's done. He is the founder of one of our unicorns, unicorn $1 billion valuation. Amazing. He's a seasoned entrepreneur. He's a professional in his own right, and he's the founder and CEO of MoneyPoint, which, you know, the MoneyPoint, the blue everywhere. This is the guy. So, it's a great pleasure to welcome Tosin Eniolorunda to The Builders.
Thank you so much for making the time to come and talk to us.
Right, let's go back. Childhood. In Ibadan. Parents entrepreneurs, civil servants?
My mom was a teacher. She's late. My dad is an entrepreneur actually, an engineering contractor. So, yeah, my childhood was a pretty much lower middle class typical, you know, middle family. Mom was a primary school teacher. My earliest memory of my dad growing up was that he was in school and he was also working at the same time. And I would say maybe my love for studying is kind of etched at the back of my mind that while I was growing, I saw him reading intently, which in retrospect sounds like he was reading for school. So, I kind of got attracted to some of the books he was reading, which...
What kind of books were they?
They were engineering books. They were electrical engineering books and I found myself just getting interested in these books. Growing up in a lower middle class family, you know, I desired some of the shiny things that kids would typically have and my mom would always say, you know, 'You don't need that. You don't need that. The basics.' So, I really wanted to build those things for myself also. So, I would say the love for building basically came from needing to, you know, build I would say toys for myself. And also the love combined with fact that I used to read my dad's books. So, basically the idea of seeing how systems work and to build were shaped, you know, from those. And I used to also say one more thing that, you know, growing up, I'm 40, I will be 41 this year. So, but you know, we got to get used to Nigeria's deteriorating power situation. And, you know, it was something that was sad for me when they took light and it becomes hot and everything. So, you know, just all those little hardships, but I would not say we were a poor family. But, the need for a better life, the need for, you know, having a cool air-conditioned room to sleep in were all kind of like primal drivers together for what I became.
But, so let me ask you this, were you entrepreneurial as a child? What, you know, what was the first money you made?
Yes, I've been entrepreneurial as a child. The first notable money I made was when I was in junior secondary school and I began to practice as an electronic technician in Ibadan. I think one of my mom's relative was an electrician or like an electronic technician. And I went apprentice with him and I began to make small money then. Repairing things for people. And, you know, things were a little tough for my family then. And I remember there was one occasion that my mom was waiting for me to bring the money home. And on my way home I spent the money.
Hey! How much was the money? Give us context.
Okay, tell us what you spent it on.
I bought fish. And when I got home, she was mad and she beat me. So, yeah, I think it was pretty clear to me then that, you know, you need to escape certain things. And two, there's an important value for me money. I did not really appreciate for her to have done that then. That means because then also my dad was not feeling too good. So, things were struggling at that time. So, I think that was some first time I began to make little money. But, through school I made money in university. I was essentially building software and hardware projects for final year students. And because it was annual, it allowed me to make money and save to sponsor myself through the year most times. I lived a comfortable life most of the university based on that.
And then you left and you went into the world of work. What was your first job?
My first job was actually at Ab Zone. I was doing my NYSC service there. I actually served in Schlumberger. I did my internship in Schlumberger. So, I would say maybe if you count internship as experience, I'll say that's my first one. And I made a choice. Do I want to go into oil or do I want to go into IT? And I gave myself a very high jump to say if I'm going to go into oil, then I must get into the best school, Stanford, and I must get into petroleum engineering. And I knew it was a tall order because I studied mechanical engineering. And I would not have some of the prerequisites. But, I essentially said that if I would choose the path of safety because to me that was safety. Being a petroleum engineer or studied oil, anything oil related in America and the top school guarantees you almost like a minimum standard of living. So, when I did my GMAT, I think my score together with my course in school, they made me qualify for that. So, I was like, 'Okay, that's it. I tried.' So, now entrepreneurship it is. So, then decided to, you know, focus on entrepreneurship.
So, entrepreneurship, so you were but you know, you went into Interswitch. So, you went into a job. So, you were pursuing So, at that stage were you pursuing a career or did you always know that I'm heading for entrepreneurship?
I knew I was heading for entrepreneurship. I really wanted to work somewhere first. The mental model I had then there's somebody that said I can't remember who's saying that the person got to where they got to by standing on the shoulders of giants. It's a saying. And it's used to ring at the back of my mind. So, I deliberately chose Interswitch to work with because Interswitch is the grandfather of fintech in Nigeria. Correct. So, and I was lucky enough to have gotten a reference from somebody I did a project for who used to work in Interswitch. So, it was a smooth job to get into.
How important would you say to entrepreneurs because Mide Dacity is all about teaching, you know, we're here to We love you. We love to see you but really we're here to learn from you. So, how important would you say is in your industry to actually do that grounding? Because we hear about people that just start something in their bedroom. They're coding and then, you know, how important was it for you?
I think all those idea of one we see coding in his bedroom and creating something massive is a fantastic stories but I think they're the outliers. I think majority of successful entrepreneurs certainly did their 10,000 hours. And you either do if you are doing your 10,000 hour, it's maybe you found something extremely novel that the world has way more experience that you have way more experience than the world even while you were in school. AKA you invented something brand new like the first story of Facebook. Or you will say for Steve Jobs who lived in Silicon Valley where they lived in the state of the art. And in that time the state of the art itself was just growing like the way at the state of the art. If you want to start in industry, you need to start at the state of the art. What's going to differentiate you? So naturally it's that if you want to start in an industry, get to the state of the art. Now if you are lucky that you are already at the state of the art before you start working, then good for you, but that's not typical. So that grounding, that staying in learning how to Because you need to differentiate yourself. Your offering needs to be different. What makes your offering different? Why would your solution be better than the incumbents? So you will need to know something and typically innovation typically comes from already knowing what the state of the art is, knowing what the problems are, and immersing yourself long enough to see a different way to be able to do it.
So you paid your dues with Interswitch, right? How many years did you do all together?
Oh, only? Now you know, in your industry where people are sort of get itchy after 30 minutes, I think 5 years is a good career. So that that grounded you. And then when you left, was MoneyPoint already in your head?
No. MoneyPoint wasn't clear. As a matter of fact, I started with a company called TeamApt. And I say it's TeamApt because I didn't have a better name. And you know, I just found like you know, the same whatever we're going to do is going to be apt. So, team apt. And initially we built software solutions for banks. And we did that for from 2015 till about 2019 there about. Yes. Yeah, before we figured out okay, you know what? Let's go out directly to customers.
To customers. So, you were B2B. You were the back end.
B2 enterprise, correct. B2B, yes. Back end for banks. Yes.
Right. And then you just decided right, that's it.
Yes. Couple of triggering events, but the main thing was that that business was hard to scale. It was hard to scale because we saw ourselves like farmers. We were building the raw product for the banks, but the banks needed to market it. And they also paid us, you know, late, didn't pay us the right amount. They had most of the upsides. And you still have to deal with all the inefficiencies of the banks in building those solutions. So, we felt like it was going to be a better yield to direct those efforts directly to customers for us. So, that was the main trigger.
Money point, name. Timing. Tell us that story.
About 2019 when we made the decision to say, 'Okay, you know what? We want to start building for customers directly.' We decided to say it's going to be because in payments, in fintech, you either make money on payments or on interest or on subscription. And so, and for you to make money on interest, you need a banking license. Either microfinance license or commercial banking license. Nobody really pays for subscription in payments. So, the only opportunity remaining was making money on payments. Payments can only be of two types offline or online. That was the trend thinking first principles thinking. So we launched the two offline and online. We launched online first it's called MoneyFire, the payment gateway. And we now launched what is now called MoneyPoint. Now the way we landed on the name MoneyPoint was I think we called it Quigo initially. I can't. Could it be Quigo? Yes I think that's what it was called. So I think about we now held like a small naming competition in the organization and told people to come up with different names. And I think one of our employees then came up with the name MoneyPoint and of all the course of names that came we felt like that's what represented what it was the most. So we named the product MoneyPoint. Then the company wasn't even named MoneyPoint. We named the product MoneyPoint. So TeamApt now had two products MoneyFire the payment gateway and MoneyPoint and using our payment license then. We now launched offline payment acceptance. And when the numbers started coming in. You need to know okay me then that in 2019 offline payment was not sexy. It was very very unsexy. What was sexy was online payment acceptance. People saw offline as you know rough you know dirty. Well the numbers are saying different things. The number was sexy.
So offline. For those of watching that don't know online. Offline just give us the idiots guide.
Got it. So online is we are facilitating payments for people that are doing it through the internet. Example I'm trying to pay online on my phone. That's online payments. Offline is in person. I want to accept payments in person, aka stores. And typically that's a point of sale device. Yes. So when So I have my card and I want to pay. So that's your offline. That's what you do in front of the merchant and I want to pay. So it's going to be my card, it could be transfer, it could be whatever. So
And that was a No one was looking at that market.
What made it unsexy? What was making it unattractive?
Because it had this physical distribution connotation. And physical distribution, you know, is almost like you are building a massive distribution network of sales people and not quite tech. I mean, tech is meant to be, you know, Fast, quick, digital, good-looking. Exactly. And this wasn't. It wasn't then. So But when the numbers came in, the numbers were looking good and we made the decision to shift most of our resources into the offline payments division. I think in retrospect what happened was that Nigerians because Nigerians don't naturally want to carry cash due to safety, due to the fact that it's also inconvenient, Nigerians actually really wanted to needed offline payments methods. I remember when we went to do the research then, my team came back and said, 'Tosin, we went to the market, this thing is everywhere.' That's a 2019. They went to one of those markets and you know, then it was Paga that was big then and they were like, 'It's everywhere.' I like they were worried that how's the market going to take it? But when I was looking at the numbers coming in, it was saying a different story. You are seeing a 100% month-on-month growth. So it was saying a different thing entirely. So in retrospect, I think what happened was Nigerians simply needed a better way to pay. Now COVID accelerated it because COVID now made people simply realize, I can't go to banks to withdraw cash or the ATM. I want to withdraw cash. Now that's what shot up agency banking. So overnight, agents popped up everywhere. So combination of people losing their jobs made a lot of people go into agency banking, made distribution everywhere. And now made people want to withdraw cash. The next phase that now shot up offline banking, offline payments, was cashless. So with cashless, people now didn't have cash. So they now jumped from I need to go to bank to withdraw cash to I am withdrawing cash to agent. Now during cashless, now jumping to I don't even need cash. So our Nigerians stuck to that.
It's quite remarkable really because I've noticed Nigeria was ahead of many countries. Because I would go to America and the way we were transacting payments here in Nigeria was way way ahead of some places in the States. Was that a function of policy? So was that the cashless policy? Was that insecurity? What drove that?
I think it's a combination of all the things you have mentioned. Policy certainly was very explicit about cashless. Nigeria has had a cashless policy for well over a decade. And two, Nigeria brought real-time interbank transactions real-time, which when it started maybe 12 or 13 years ago was also quite the Also, Nigeria made sure that the prices were low. Up till today, Nigerian interchange prices is one of the lowest in the world. In the world.
Some of your competitors have been complaining.
Yes. In the world. We are not the one, okay?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I've been speaking, you know, I do a lot of research in business and one of the you know, they say that, look, the fact that it's fixed, the fact that it's not value on volume based is actually, you know, is killing them, but that it's good for us. As consumers, we like it. We're not complaining.
Well, you know, we need to pay the bills.
But hey, look, you got a $1 billion valuation on one of our unicorns and we're very proud of you, by the way. Because of that and that's why I started off by asking you about your parents and asking about your background so that, you know, those people that are watching for the he's got to talk about where when he inherited money or when he found money on the floor. I'm just taking them through your whole story. There's nothing anywhere. You're self-made. Yes, and we're very proud of that, you know, that value. Well, how did that make you feel when people started telling you you're a unicorn, you got a $1 billion valuation?
I mean, one of the famous thing that Bill Gates said is a hamburger is just a hamburger. To me, it changes nothing about who I am. I would be humble. However, I'll say perhaps the level of accomplishments has insulated me from some distress that people would typically have. As most people that are comfortable financially will know, you don't worry about certain things. I think human beings also have the natural need to have a social recognition and because social recognition comes to you with it, it also takes away that need to continually drive for it. So, I'll be humble about all that, but beyond that, it's also a risky way to live life. Entrepreneurship is certainly very risky path to happiness. It's one of the strongest test of one's maturity. So, one needs to balance one and it's not even guaranteed, right? So, some of us are lucky. I am lucky. I've made some progress in it, but it's also not guaranteed. So, I always caveat all the time that, you know, one should do this only if you must do it. And must do it in this case is that you know who you are and you know that this is the only path for me. And that's what I've seen about most successful entrepreneurs. They are simply like that. They are restless. They have big goals, big dreams, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a superior way to life.
Yeah, I mean, I think what you're describing is an intentionality about business and I think because business is tough, if you don't have that when it gets tough, it'll show, right? And it often shows up with people just losing it or just deciding I'm not doing this anymore. So, you know, you do need staying power, but that having been said, you must take your flowers when they're given. A billion dollars valuation is a huge, you know, it's a massive pride to us in Nigeria and I We're team MoneyPoint. And especially because your competition are backed by a foreign government. And it's a foreign government that doesn't like competition. So, how have you been able to differentiate yourself and appeal, you know, win the hearts of your customers?
So, Nigerian customers certainly do not care who is offering services to them as long as they get the value. But we should care. Oh, yes, we should. And it's a story that should be told. Made in America, Americans love it. Made in Britain, and Britain managers need to know made in Nigeria. In Nigeria means my sister or my brother gets a job. Exactly. Right? I think we should care. I mean, I'm not against the competition. Oh, yes. But I do feel that when Nigerians have gone out and stuck their neck out and created a market, Correct. we And I don't think we is just government. I think it's we, the people. Yes. Should say, 'This is our You know, the way we used to at school, this is our people.' So, my MoneyPoint is our own. Our own. Correct. Correct. So, how have you coped with that? So, I mean, we've fought tooth and nail to ensure that we provide great services. And certainly coming from being Nigerian means hiring Nigerians, means building it from Nigeria. That's also given us a lot of challenges that we've overcome. First of all, we need to ensure that our product work all the time. People can rely on it for their payments. They cannot be disappointed. We need to ensure that our price points are affordable. Not necessarily the cheapest, in fact, not the cheapest, but we want to ensure that people businesses can thrive while using our solutions. We want to ensure that people can get quick, fast, easy access to credit, especially beyond the served, especially the excluded. We want to ourselves that we want to ensure that Nigerians are relationship-based people. Nigerians, especially businesses, will generally only find comfort if they know that if anything goes wrong, this is the person I will go to hold responsible. So, relationship building with businesses is also a core component for us to ensure that businesses can love us and trust us and know where to go to or who to hold responsible when things go wrong. And building such things, especially coming from the country, means we need to make sure that we hire world-class individuals. And we're lucky that we found some Nigerians that are quite world-class. And in building this out, especially when you know that you are competing with a competition that comes from one of the if not the strongest in terms of, you know, human capital development and grit. So, I would not say it has been easiest thing. I would say we've managed to pull through very hard by making sure that we find some of the best talents. We have quite a bit of best graduating students in MoneyPoint. Best graduating students from Union Bank, from one or two sets, from Ife, from UI. And you know, make sure that we also keep on developing them. We've also augmented our talent with, you know, people from all over the world. We hire all over the world. Our CEO is American. He's ex-Bridgewater, ex-McKinsey, ex-Capital One. You know, have our HR team and talent acquisition for team from Checkout. Some of them are based in the UK, people from Poland. You know, we have quite a bit of team also in India and in Pakistan, you know, to augment the talent. The main thing is that world-class talent Nigeria first and world-class talent augment is our main mantra. So, yeah.
See, I'm smiling when you're naming all those countries where you pull talent from. And I feel so proud because, you know, this is a Nigerian company. Yeah, so well done. Well done. Well done. Even if no one else has said well done to you, let me on behalf of Nigeria say extremely well done. So tell me about talent because I heard you speaking about, you know, the struggle to retain talent. And every entrepreneur that sat in that seat has said the same thing. Meanwhile, the statistics tell us that millions of Nigerians are unemployed. What's the problem?
I can talk and talk and talk about this. I feel Nigeria, we need to step up our talent development program. On one hand, we're not developing enough high-quality talent enough. On the other hand, we're losing the ones that we've done developing to immigration. If we go to MoneyPoint's website today, I'm sure you'll see over 500 vacancies. And I am being forced to fill many of these talents, especially the technical ones, abroad. And that's because the quality that we need, we don't have people passing those basic quality gates. And that's because our institutions are not turning out people at the right rate. Even if they are turning them out, they are not meeting the quality requirements. And two, the little that we have almost been forced to leave the country, not just because of the state of the country, but also because of peer pressure. I have one of my product managers that has been in Nigeria all along, and she said she's leaving to Canada. Because she just wants to leave the country. She's well paid here. She has a good job. I'm sure she's closer to her parents, but I'm pretty sure that when she looks around and sees her friends and sees what the whole environment is saying, she has the peer pressure, even if it's not like she needs it. So she was forced to go to school. I say, 'I'm going to school as a route to immigrate to Canada.' And when I asked her, she said, 'I had just had to go to school as to leave Nigeria.' And I'm like, okay, you know what? No problem. We'll sponsor you. You don't even need to go to school. Because we were forced to now create sponsorship programs in the UK and Canada to retain Nigerians that want to emigrate. And I also think that the problem of the quantity and quality that we're coming is two-folds. One, there's a demographic problem and mentality problem. And two, there's a quality of institution problem. For the demographic problem, I believe that our youth of today are not seeing enough faith in studying hard as a path to being successful in life. And it's probably caused by the age-long unemployment problems that people have had. So, they don't even have the faith that What happened to this guy that studied hard? Look at what he's doing. So, they don't have the need to study hard again and they are all beginning to go into all sorts of vices, which includes fraud and, you know, prostitution. So, that's the demographic problem we have. And we also have the quality of institution problem that the quality of the people coming out, you know, because the human mind is elastic. If you're not trained and, you know, have the right set of mentality. Compare that to China where people go through this rigorous exam called Gakao,
where people think and work extremely hard to pass those exams. And in Nigeria, you look at WAEC and they are reducing cut-off scores every year. So, those two problems are big ones for us. And by the time even the good ones that come out of good universities, the next thing that they are looking at is how to exit the country.
I think, you know, so for me, one of the things we wanted to do with Naija City, and thank you for bringing up that point because it's one of the reasons why we've done this, is to show people an alternative because I also feel that, and that's the gap we saw, people aren't seeing heroes. People aren't seeing examples to follow.
And they're seeing them in other countries. So, it's natural to want to go and social media amplifies these things, right? You see somebody who left, they've gone to Canada, they're walking around showing you their car. They're not telling you that if they miss one payment on that car the speed at which it will be disabled is, you know. So, I do understand where it's coming from and maybe this, hearing people like you, you went to Ife, mom's a teacher, dad's an entrepreneur, but you've created something in this same Nigeria is part of that process.
Yeah, reorienting people's heads because at the same time globally these countries are telling us they don't want us. Right? They're telling us they don't want us. They keep tightening the rules. They say go back to your country.
Go and repair your country.
I totally agree with you, absolutely. Especially the social media points you mentioned. Look at the case of this fraudster that was arrested called Hushpuppi and how he blew up on social media. It's not what I know in advanced Western nations that they would condone. People are, you know, giving a lot of attention and positive praises to role models that are supposed to be questionable. And you see comments on social media and people are seeing this guy that has a questionable source of wealth.
So, it's a demographic problem. It's something I think is solvable in a few years if, you know, the right forces go into it. It's a reorientation of the mind because I don't think we've lost our correct sense of right and wrong. But I feel this demographic problem needs to be solved because it's almost like you're going against the grain these days for you to be able to take a straight path.
Yeah. Yeah. No, that I agree with you. It's become the road less traveled. And it's unfortunate because, you know, as a people, we are hard working. We're resilient. And we have the right values from our families. So, we need to reorient, maybe I don't know. Is reorienting strong enough? Reprogram? I don't know. What's the word?
Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think maybe we go here. I mean, it's been on since but I'm pretty sure this direction started in the '90s. I feel so. So, I mean, consistent 10 years or decades of work, I believe, would move us in the right direction again.
But we need more jobs. And more jobs means more businesses like yours succeeding. So, you bank the SME sector. What are you seeing down there?
Oh, I love SMEs. These days, every time I see an SME shop, it's almost like it tugs my heart. Like when I see that lady selling provisions, when I see that woman, that buka woman, when I see a gas station, because these are the engines of the nation. Like you said, these people are the ones that provide 80% of the jobs. They have how many of them? Maybe 40 million of them according to last count, and they employ one to two or three people. That's already like almost all the employment.
So, and if they just grow by 10%, what that does to our economy, you just can't even begin to believe.
Exactly. Yeah. So, do you see a lot of hope, a lot of energy down there in the SMEs? Because your network is broad, right? You talked about replicating the political network, ward, local government. So, you're everywhere. You're in the 774 local governments of Nigeria. What are you seeing? Where's the growth regionally?
So, where's the growth regionally? I will say the growth is kind of like, I start in northeast, which is generally challenged. A lot of growth comes from north central these days. More north central, mostly FCT. It will shock you to say the largest local government area by transaction in the country is AMAC. Abuja, correct. AMAC is the largest. AMAC is actually larger than some other states in terms of transactions. And I think it's closely followed by Alimosho of Lagos. So, north central, there's a lot of growth in there. I think generally almost all the other regions are kind of growing equally. We always see whenever there's a challenge in the economy, we always see it also. For example, if fuel becomes more expensive, we see ticket size, average ticket size is going up, volume's going down. Essentially, people begin to prioritize the necessities. Things are going now also more expensive. We see that. We have definitely seen a reduction in the average transaction ticket since the height of the inflation of like 2 years ago till now, which is a good thing for the economy. Also, there's a lot of competition SMEs face, a huge competition generally in the ecosystem. So, we have thinning margins. They get thinning margins all the time. We have good stories, too. Not all gloom. Item 7, for example, is one of our proud stories because we...
