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Digital lending has the potential to expand access to formal credit for millions of underserved Nigerians and stimulate economic growth by providing small businesses with the working capital needed to scale their operations, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mathesis Analytics, Winston Osuchukwu, has said.
Osuchukwu said that despite Nigeria’s progress in financial inclusion, access to financial services had yet to translate into meaningful access to credit for millions of micro-entrepreneurs and small business owners.
Citing EFInA’s 2026 Access to Financial Services survey, he noted that 73 per cent of Nigerian adults were now formally included in the financial system, largely driven by the growing adoption of digital wallets and payment agents.
However, he said the proportion of adults borrowing from banks and other licensed financial institutions increased only from six per cent in 2023 to 10 per cent in 2026, leaving the vast majority without access to formal credit.
According to him, traditional lending models, which depend largely on collateral, payslips and audited financial records, have continued to exclude market traders, artisans and informal business operators whose financial activities are not adequately captured by conventional credit assessment systems.
He explained that although many informal businesses had the capacity to repay loans, their creditworthiness remained difficult for lenders to establish because their transactions were often spread across multiple bank accounts, mobile wallets and cash-based operations.
Osuchukwu said the inability to access affordable credit had continued to limit the growth potential of small businesses, preventing them from increasing inventory, acquiring equipment, meeting rising demand and creating employment opportunities.
Using the example of a market trader, he explained that access to short-term working capital could enable a business owner to purchase additional stock during periods of increased demand, generate higher sales and reinvest the proceeds to expand operations.
Similarly, he noted that a tailor who could not afford an additional sewing machine might be forced to turn down customer orders, thereby losing potential revenue to competitors.
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He warned that in the absence of institutional credit, many small business operators were compelled to depend on savings groups and informal moneylenders, whose limited capital and high interest rates could further undermine business growth.
On the way forward, the Mathesis Analytics CEO advocated the adoption of digital lending models powered by alternative data and artificial intelligence-driven credit assessment.
He said digital lenders could leverage verifiable transaction histories from mobile wallets, agency banking networks and utility payments to assess borrowers’ revenue patterns, cash flows and repayment capacity without relying exclusively on traditional collateral requirements.
According to him, this approach could provide underserved individuals and small businesses with their first access to formal credit while allowing lenders to build reliable repayment histories that could support higher loan limits and more competitive interest rates over time.
He added that affordable digital credit could improve business productivity by enabling traders to purchase goods in bulk, artisans to acquire additional equipment and entrepreneurs to employ more workers to meet growing demand.
Osuchukwu said the broader economic benefits could extend beyond individual businesses, particularly as increased access to capital would help informal enterprises expand, create jobs and contribute more meaningfully to national productivity.
“When millions of informal operators are given the capital to upgrade from basic survival to active expansion, the effects extend far beyond their individual businesses,” he said.
He added that expanding formal credit to micro-enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses could strengthen economic activity, deepen the tax base and unlock the multiplier effects associated with business expansion and employment generation.
