You have been running your business for a few years now. Customers pay you. You pay your suppliers. You know which months are strong and which ones you have to manage carefully. You have built something real not on paper, but in daily operation.
When you apply for a loan, the bank asks for statements. You have a GTBank account where most transfers come in, an OPay wallet your agent network uses, and a Moniepoint account you opened because one of your largest clients pays through their POS system. None of these accounts tells your full story. Each one tells a fragment of it.
The bank reviews what it can see typically your primary account finds irregular deposits with no recognisable pattern, and declines. Or offers an amount that does not match what you actually need, at a rate that makes it painful to service.
Nigeria has around 40 million MSMEs facing a combined funding gap estimated at $236 billion. Only a small fraction have access to formal bank loans. The vast majority rely on informal, high-interest credit that traps many in a cycle of debt rather than enabling growth. Punch
In Côte d'Ivoire, the structural problem is the same but the terrain is different. 78% of SMEs in the country cite financing constraints as a major obstacle to their growth. The formal banking sector is conservative, collateral-driven, and oriented toward large corporate clients. SME lending that does happen often comes through microfinance institutions operating under BCEAO supervision constrained in scale, in ticket size, and in how far they can extend into underserved segments. International Finance Corporation
The core issue in both markets is not that businesses are uncreditworthy. It is that the data which proves their creditworthiness is fragmented, informal, and invisible to the systems lenders use to make decisions. Revenue earned through mobile money does not show up the same way as a bank transfer. Sales made on a digital marketplace leave a data trail that no credit bureau is reading. The business is operating, but the financial system cannot see it operating.
Nigeria's open banking framework, approved by the CBN in April 2025 with implementation starting August 2025, is designed to change this allowing regulated financial institutions to access a customer's data across accounts, with consent, through a standardised API. For the first time, the data a business generates across multiple banks and platforms can be read as a single picture. TechCabal
That is a meaningful shift. But the full benefit of it only flows to businesses that are positioned to use it ones that have their financial data organised, connected, and legible to lenders who are ready to act on it.
The businesses that access this early will not just get a loan. They will start building a credit identity that reflects how they actually operate, not how they appear on a single bank statement reviewed on a single day. That is a durable advantage and it compounds over time.
The system is not fixed yet. But the infrastructure to fix it is being built. The businesses that understand what is changing and position themselves within it are the ones who will find the credit gap closing in their favour.