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By Felicia Omisore
While many local e-commerce platforms focused on logistics in 2021, a quiet revolution was taking place on the financial side of transactions, pioneered by Zoomba Digital Limited. At the heart of this innovation is Ayokunle Gabriel Olowoniwa, the platform’s co-founder and lead engineer, whose unique algorithms have fundamentally addressed one of the biggest challenges facing digital commerce: flexible payments backed by institutional finance.
The local market traditionally struggled with consumer trust in instalment payments. Mr. Olowoniwa tackled this by engineering two core payment models designed to mitigate risk while encouraging consumer adoption:
The “Layaway Classic” algorithm allowed buyers to secure items with a low 40% initial payment, crucially locking in the price against the volatile market inflation.
The “Pick It Now” model was even more groundbreaking, allowing customers to take delivery after paying just 70% of the cost.
These were not just simple payment schedules. The complexity lay in the backend orchestration. Olowoniwa’s work involved building a proprietary scoring logic to manage merchant settlement, customer risk exposure, and inventory release, effectively automating real-time risk calculation, a capability absent in most existing local gateway solutions. The immediate market response was overwhelming. On its launch day, Zoomba recorded over ₦10 million in down payments, demonstrating the immediate demand for this technical solution.
Scaling Through Strategic Integration and Financial Impact
Zoomba’s success quickly moved beyond simple partial payments. Recognizing the need for scale and liquidity, Mr. Olowoniwa led the technical charge on integrating the platform with established financial players.
“The real challenge was making institutional finance work seamlessly with an instalment model,” explains a source close to the company. “Ayokunle built a direct integration layer that connected the platform with partners like Edfin Microfinance Bank.”
This sophisticated multi-channel architecture was a technical game-changer. It allowed Zoomba to secure 100% upfront payment for financed products from the bank, transferring the repayment risk to the financial institution and solving Zoomba’s immediate liquidity problems.
This architecture, seamlessly processing payments through Flutterwave, Paystack, and the Edfin integration, has allowed Zoomba to manage transaction flows totaling hundreds of millions in Naira.
Mr. Olowoniwa’s work represents a significant step forward for the local fintech ecosystem, proving that Nigerian engineers possess the technical acumen to devise novel solutions for unique market challenges. His ability to build a robust financial infrastructure from the ground up, linking high-volume commercial transactions to real-time institutional finance, positions him as a key talent in Nigeria’s evolving digital landscape.
