Cryptocurrency exchanges are the backbone of the digital asset economy. They enable users to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies securely while supporting liquidity, price discovery, and market growth.

As the crypto market continues to mature, businesses entering this space or scaling existing platforms must make one critical decision early on:

Choosing the right cryptocurrency exchange development company.

The wrong partner can lead to security gaps, scalability issues, regulatory trouble, and delayed launches. The right one accelerates time-to-market, ensures compliance, and builds long-term competitive advantage.

This guide explores what to look for in a crypto exchange development company and why ITIO Innovex is a preferred choice for businesses worldwide.

Understanding Cryptocurrency Exchange Development Services

Cryptocurrency exchange development services involve building, customizing, and deploying secure platforms that allow users to trade digital assets efficiently.

These services typically include:

Core Features of Cryptocurrency Exchange Development

1. Scalable Platform Architecture

A well-designed exchange must handle high transaction volumes while maintaining performance, uptime, and data integrity. Scalability is critical for future growth.

2. User Interface (UI) & User Experience (UX)

An intuitive, trader-friendly interface improves adoption, reduces friction, and enhances retention especially for first-time users.

3. High-Performance Trading Engine

The trading engine is the heart of the exchange. It must support:

• Fast order matching
• Multiple order types
• Real-time price updates
• High concurrency

Security & Compliance: Non-Negotiables in Crypto Exchange Development

1. Advanced Security Measures

A reliable exchange integrates:

• Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
• End-to-end encryption
• Cold and hot wallet architecture
• DDoS protection and monitoring

2. Regulatory Compliance

Adherence to global standards such as:

• AML (Anti-Money Laundering)
• KYC (Know Your Customer)

is essential for legal operation and long-term trust.

🔔 Thinking of Launching a Crypto Exchange? Pause Here

Before investing heavily, a short technical review can save months of rework and costly mistakes.

👉 DM us directly or book a free consultation with ITIO Innovex
🌐 https://itio.in/
📩 Message us on LinkedIn or request a callback

https://cal.com/alok01/30min

No sales pressure- just clarity.

Additional Cryptocurrency Exchange Development Services

• Wallet Integration: Secure hot and cold wallet implementation
• API Integration: Liquidity providers, algorithmic trading, third-party tools
• Multi-Currency & Multi-Pair Support
• Admin Dashboards & Risk Management Tools

How to Choose the Best Cryptocurrency Exchange Development Company

When evaluating development partners, consider the following critical factors:

Industry Experience & Reputation

Choose a company with a proven track record in blockchain and crypto exchange development, backed by real-world deployments.

Customization & Scalability

Your exchange should evolve with market demands. A flexible architecture enables feature expansion and regional adaptation.

Security & Compliance Focus

Security breaches can destroy trust overnight. Your development partner must prioritize security and regulatory readiness from day one.

Technology Stack & Features

Ensure access to:

• High-performance trading engines
• Liquidity management solutions
• Support for multiple cryptocurrencies and networks

Support & Maintenance

24/7 technical support and proactive maintenance are essential for uninterrupted operations.

Why Businesses Choose ITIO for Cryptocurrency Exchange Development

ITIO Innovex stands out as a trusted cryptocurrency exchange development company delivering secure, scalable, and fully customized solutions.

Proven Expertise

With deep experience in blockchain and fintech, ITIO has delivered exchange platforms across diverse business models and global markets.

Customization & Innovation

Every exchange is tailored to your branding, workflows, and growth strategy no rigid templates, no limitations.

Enterprise-Grade Security & Compliance

ITIO integrates advanced encryption, secure wallet systems, and AML/KYC compliance to protect user funds and platform integrity.

Global Reach & Market Readiness

Support for:

• Multi-currency trading
• Global payment systems
• Region-specific compliance requirements

End-to-End Technical Support

From ideation to deployment and ongoing optimization, ITIO’s blockchain experts ensure your exchange operates smoothly and scales confidently.

🚀 Ready to Build or Upgrade Your Crypto Exchange?

Whether you’re launching a new exchange or enhancing an existing one, the right technology partner makes all the difference.

👉 Visit: https://itio.in/
📩 DM us for a quick discussion
📞 Request a callback to explore your exchange strategy

https://cal.com/alok01/30min

Let’s build a secure, scalable, and future-ready crypto trading platform together.

Conclusion

Choosing the best cryptocurrency exchange development company is a strategic decision that directly impacts security, scalability, and long-term success.

By evaluating experience, customization capabilities, compliance readiness, and technical support, businesses can avoid costly missteps. ITIO Innovex delivers all of this making it a reliable partner for cryptocurrency exchange development in today’s fast-evolving digital asset landscape.

Choosing the Best Cryptocurrency Exchange Development Company: Why ITIO.in Leads the Way was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I work in payment infrastructure, and I keep seeing the same pattern across startups, marketplaces, and PSP-style builds.

Teams spend weeks perfecting checkout.

Then they get blindsided by payouts, disputes, mismatched balances, and “why didn’t I get paid?” emails.

Not because the payment gateway failed.
But because KYB → risk → routing → settlement → reconciliation was treated like a straight line.

It isn’t.

It’s a system one that has to stay consistent when real money, real merchants, refunds, chargebacks, delayed webhooks, and regulatory scrutiny enter the picture.

If you’re building any of the following, this applies directly to you:

• A marketplace (split payouts, vendor settlements)
• A SaaS product (subscriptions, prorations, refunds)
• A PSP or payment product
• Crypto rails (fiat ↔ crypto, compliance + settlement mapping)

The Hidden Failure Point: “Operational Truth” vs. “Money Movement”

Your dashboard can look perfect while your operation is quietly breaking.

In production, the real question becomes:

Can you explain, in one sentence, why a merchant got paid this exact amount today?

If the answer is “we’ll check logs,” you’re already accumulating risk.

That’s how teams end up with:

• Payout disputes and support chaos
• Manual reconciliation marathons
• Frozen settlements when risk flags trigger
• Messy chargeback handling
• Merchant churn (the quiet, dangerous kind)

Below are the five choke points where payment products usually break — even when checkout works flawlessly.

1. KYB Isn’t Paperwork. It’s Segmentation.

KYB is often treated as:

Documents in → approval out.

In reality, KYB is how you decide:

• Who gets approved instantly vs reviewed
• Who has limits or rolling reserves
• Who requires ongoing monitoring
• Who can be paid out and when

A simple starting point that works:

• Create three risk tiers: low / medium / high
• Define per tier:
• Limits
• Reserve rules
• Payout schedules
• Monitoring triggers

If everyone is approved the same way, you’re deferring risk- not managing it.

2. Chargebacks Aren’t Support Tickets. They’re Deadlines.

Disputes come with strict evidence requirements and time windows.

If your workflow is “handle manually,” you will eventually:

• Miss deadlines
• Lose disputes you could have won
• Watch ratios quietly creep upward

A minimum viable dispute workflow:

• Evidence checklist by business type
• Clear ownership (who prepares, who submits)
• Automated reminders before deadlines
• Standardized evidence folders per transaction

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about not relying on memory during pressure.

3. Settlement Is Where Trust Is Earned

Merchants don’t judge you by UI.

They judge you by one thing:

Did I get paid correctly and on time?

Most settlement issues come from:

• Unclear fee logic
• Partial refunds and netting
• Rolling reserves and holds
• Multiple PSP settlement formats
• Currency conversion differences

The fix that prevents most pain:

Write payout rules in plain English.

Spell out:

• Fees
• Reserve / hold logic
• Refund and chargeback impact
• Payout schedule

If you can’t explain it simply, it won’t scale cleanly.

4. Reconciliation Is Your Real Source of Truth

In the real world:

• “Success” at checkout ≠ settled money
• Settlement files lag
• Webhooks arrive late or out of order
• Refunds don’t always net how you expect

A minimum viable reconciliation mindset:

• Clear internal transaction states
• Idempotency rules (no duplicates)
• Settlement mapping logic (PSP file → your ledger)
• An exception queue for human review

Even a spreadsheet-driven exception queue is better than

“We’ll figure it out later.”

Later is expensive.

5. Routing Without Monitoring Becomes Expensive

Routing can improve approvals and reduce cost- but only if you monitor it.

Every week, you should be able to answer:

• Which route is degrading?
• Where are declines increasing?
• Which region or MCC is risky?
• What changed after the last release?

Track these weekly (even in Google Sheets):

• Approval rate
• Decline reason distribution
• Dispute rate
• Refund rate
• Settlement delay rate
• Reconciliation exception rate

Ten minutes of review here saves months of cleanup later.

A 10-Minute Sanity Check for Your KYB → Settlement System

If you’re building payouts or payment rails, answer these honestly:

• Do we have merchant tiers with rules per tier?
• Can we pause or hold payouts based on risk triggers?
• Do we have a dispute workflow (evidence, deadlines, owner)?
• Are payout rules clearly documented?
• Can we reconcile settlement files to internal states?
• Do we review approvals, declines, and disputes weekly?

If you answered “no” to two or more, your product may work today- but you’re likely accumulating operational debt that becomes very expensive later.

Why I’m Sharing This

Most payment content focuses on APIs and integrations.

But the hard part is keeping money movement and operational truth aligned- consistently, under pressure, at scale.

These are the lessons teams usually learn after a painful incident. I’m sharing them so fewer teams have to.

I keep a one-page KYB → Settlement scorecard I use to sanity-check payment setups.

If you want it, comment with:

1. What you’re building (marketplace / SaaS / PSP / crypto rails)
2. Your biggest headache (onboarding, disputes, payout delays, reconciliation, declines)

I’ll reply with the scorecard and the top 2–3 gaps to fix first for your model.

If enough people ask, I’ll publish the scorecard as a follow-up post.

The Payment Stack Nobody Draws: Why KYB → Settlement Isn’t a Flow-It’s a System was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’re new to crypto or technology in general, blockchain can sound intimidating at first. It’s one of those words that gets used everywhere, often without much explanation. For beginners, the biggest challenge isn’t understanding blockchain itself, but cutting through the noise surrounding it.

This guide to blockchain for beginners is meant to explain the concept in plain language, without technical jargon, hype, or assumptions. You don’t need a computer science background to understand it. You just need to understand how information is stored, shared, and protected in a digital world.

What Blockchain Actually Is

At its most basic level, blockchain is a type of digital record-keeping system. Instead of storing information in one central place, like a company server or database, blockchain spreads the same information across a network of computers. Every participant in the network holds a copy of the records.

These records are grouped into blocks. Each block contains a list of transactions or data entries, along with a reference to the block before it. Once a block is verified and added to the chain, it becomes extremely difficult to change. That’s where the name blockchain comes from: blocks of data linked together in a chain.

For beginners, the most important thing to understand is that blockchain is not owned by a single company or authority. The network itself maintains and verifies the data.

Why Blockchain Was Created in the First Place

Blockchain was originally designed to solve a trust problem. In traditional systems, you usually need a middleman to confirm that something happened. Banks verify payments, platforms verify identities, and companies control databases.

The problem is that central control creates risks. Systems can fail, be hacked, censored, or manipulated. Blockchain was introduced as a way to allow people to exchange value and information without needing to trust a single middleman.

Bitcoin was the first real-world use of blockchain technology. It showed that a decentralized network could securely track transactions without banks or governments managing the ledger. This idea later expanded into many other uses beyond digital currency.

How Blockchain Works Step by Step

When a transaction is made on a blockchain network, it doesn’t immediately become permanent. First, it is broadcast to the network, where it is checked by multiple participants, often called nodes. These nodes verify that the transaction follows the rules of the network.

Once verified, the transaction is grouped together with others into a block. The network then agrees that the block is valid and adds it to the chain. After this step, altering that information would require changing every copy of the blockchain across the network, which is practically impossible on large networks.

This process is what makes blockchain secure and trustworthy without relying on a central authority.

What Makes Blockchain Secure

Blockchain security comes from a combination of cryptography, decentralization, and consensus. Each block contains a cryptographic hash, which is like a digital fingerprint. If someone tries to change the data inside a block, the fingerprint changes, alerting the entire network.

Because the blockchain exists on many computers at once, there is no single point of failure. Even if some nodes go offline or act maliciously, the network continues to function as long as the majority follows the rules.

For beginners, it’s helpful to think of blockchain security as transparency plus math. Everything is visible, verifiable, and protected by cryptographic rules.

Public vs Private Blockchains

Not all blockchains are the same. Public blockchains are open to anyone. Anyone can view transactions, run a node, or participate in validation depending on the network. Bitcoin and Ethereum are well-known examples.

Private or permissioned blockchains are more restricted. They are usually used by companies or organizations that want blockchain-like features without full public access. While they still use similar technology, they are more centralized in practice.

For beginners exploring crypto and Web3, most interactions happen on public blockchains.

What Are Smart Contracts?

Smart contracts are one of the most important innovations built on blockchain technology. A smart contract is a piece of code stored on the blockchain that automatically executes when certain conditions are met.

For example, instead of trusting a company to release funds after a task is completed, a smart contract can do it automatically once the conditions are satisfied. There is no manual approval and no middleman involved.

Smart contracts allow developers to build decentralized applications, often called dApps, that run exactly as programmed. This is a major reason blockchain is being used beyond simple payments.

Real-World Uses of Blockchain

Blockchain is no longer just about cryptocurrency. It’s being used in finance, supply chain tracking, digital identity, gaming, governance, and infrastructure development. In finance, blockchain enables faster and cheaper transactions across borders. In supply chains, it helps track products transparently from origin to delivery.

Infrastructure-focused blockchain projects are working on making networks more scalable, efficient, and accessible. These systems form the foundation that allows decentralized applications to function reliably over time.

For beginners, it’s important to understand that blockchain is a tool. Its value depends on how it’s applied.

Common Misunderstandings Beginners Have

Many beginners assume blockchain and cryptocurrency are the same thing. In reality, cryptocurrency is just one application of blockchain technology. Blockchain can exist without a token, and tokens can serve many purposes beyond payments.

Another misconception is that blockchain is completely anonymous. Most public blockchains are actually pseudonymous, meaning transactions are visible, but identities are not directly tied to real-world names unless revealed elsewhere.

Understanding these distinctions helps beginners approach blockchain with realistic expectations.

Why Blockchain Matters for the Future

Blockchain represents a shift in how digital systems are built and trusted. Instead of relying on centralized entities to manage data and enforce rules, blockchain allows networks to coordinate through transparency and code.

For beginners, the most important takeaway is that blockchain is still evolving. It’s not perfect, and it’s not finished. But it’s already influencing how new platforms, financial systems, and digital infrastructure are being designed.

Learning blockchain now gives beginners a foundation to understand Web3, decentralized finance, and the next generation of internet technologies as they continue to develop.

Blockchain for Beginners: A Simple Guide to Understanding How It Really Works was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Cryptocurrency exchanges have become the foundation of the digital asset ecosystem. They enable users to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and numerous altcoins. With the growth of blockchain technology and digital finance, many entrepreneurs and businesses are considering launching their own exchanges. However, building a successful cryptocurrency exchange platform requires planning, technology, and compliance with global regulations.

What Is a Cryptocurrency Exchange?

A cryptocurrency exchange is an online trading platform that runs between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies. Exchanges can be classified into three main types:

• Centralized Exchanges: Operated by a central authority, offering fast transactions and high liquidity.
• Decentralized Exchanges: Run on blockchain networks without intermediaries.
• Hybrid Exchanges: Combine features of CEX and DEX to provide both control and decentralization.

Choosing the right model impacts development complexity, costs, and regulatory requirements.

Key Features of a Cryptocurrency Exchange

A successful cryptocurrency exchange needs to provide security, speed, and usability. Key features include:

1. User Registration and KYC

Onboarding should include email/phone verification, two-factor authentication (2FA), and KYC/AML compliance. Verifying user identities helps prevent fraud and ensures regulatory compliance.

2. Trading Engine

The trading engine matches buy and sell orders in real time. A high-performance engine supports large transaction volumes with low latency, which is critical for a smooth trading experience.

3. Wallet Integration

Wallets store users digital assets securely. Exchanges usually offer hot wallets for quick transactions and cold wallets for offline security. Supporting multiple cryptocurrencies is essential for attracting diverse users.

4. Liquidity Management

Liquidity ensures that users can trade easily without affecting prices. New exchanges often rely on market makers, liquidity APIs, or partnerships with global liquidity providers.

5. Advanced Trading Options

Modern traders expect features like spot trading, margin trading, and futures. Tools such as limit, market, and stop orders enhance user engagement.

6. Security Features

Security is critical. Measures include SSL encryption, DDoS protection, multi-signature wallets, anti-phishing systems, and regular audits to safeguard assets.

7. Admin Dashboard

An admin panel helps operators manage users, monitor transactions, set fees, and generate analytics. This ensures smooth operations and compliance tracking.

Cost of Building a Cryptocurrency Exchange

The cost depends on the development approach and platform complexity.

Development Approaches

• White-label Solutions: Faster and cheaper but less customizable.
• Custom Development: Fully tailored but higher cost and longer development time.

Estimated Costs

• Centralized Exchange: $35,000 and $500,000
• Decentralized Exchange: $30,000 and $250,000
• Hybrid Exchange: $40,000 and $350,000
• P2P Exchange: $45,000 and $300,000
• OTC Exchange: $50,000 and $250,000
• Crypto Exchange App: $30,000 and $300,000

Total Cost: $30,000 for a basic exchange; $500,000 for an advanced platform.

Conclusion

Building a cryptocurrency exchange is complex but rewarding. Success requires technology, strong security, regulatory compliance, and effective liquidity strategies. While initial development and operational costs are significant, a well-executed exchange can generate long-term value in the expanding digital asset ecosystem. Partnering with experienced development teams results in faster deployment, reduced risks, and a platform ready to compete in the global market.

Building a Cryptocurrency Exchange Platform: Key Features, Costs, and Challenges was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This latest funding brings Torq's total raised capital to $332 million, and it has plans to hire an additional 200 employees in 2026.

The post Israeli Cybersecurity Startup Torq Gets $140M Funding to Hit $1.2B Valuation appeared first on TechRepublic.

This latest funding brings Torq's total raised capital to $332 million, and it has plans to hire an additional 200 employees in 2026.

The post Israeli Cybersecurity Startup Torq Gets $140M Funding to Hit $1.2B Valuation appeared first on TechRepublic.

Data scope: This analysis tracks publicly disclosed equity rounds in Nigeria-based startups from January to December 2025. It excludes debt, grants, and infrastructure fund closes.

The Infrastructure-First Thesis

When you look at Nigerian VC funding in 2025, the headline is simple: fintech dominated with 91% of capital.

But when you zoom out to five years, the story gets more interesting: Fintech: $3.73 billion, Logistics: $137 million A 27x difference.

And 2021 — the year logistics “peaked” at $110M — was actually the year the sector’s fate was sealed. Because that $110M? It wasn’t really for logistics. TradeDepot’s $110 million Series B — the largest logistics round ever in Nigeria — funded their Buy-Now-Pay-Later product.

A logistics company had to build credit infrastructure to attract that capital. The logistics companies that survived the 2022–2025 funding winter weren’t the ones with better routing algorithms or more efficient warehouses.

They were the ones that became fintech companies. This is the data-driven story of why Nigerian VCs chose infrastructure over applications — and what it means for anyone building in Nigeria in 2026.

The 2025 Data: Infrastructure Still Dominates To understand the infrastructure-first thesis, let’s start with what happened in 2025.

The 2025 Funding Landscape

Deal data was compiled from publicly available disclosures, press releases, and VC reporting platforms. I tracked funding activity across major local and international backers to understand where capital actually flowed in 2025.

FINTECH:

• Moniepoint: $90M (Venture Round) — SME Payments & Banking
• LemFi: $53M (Series B) — Cross-border Payments
• Kredete: $22M (Series A) — Credit & Stablecoin Infrastructure
• PaidHR: $1.8M (Seed) — HR/Payroll SaaS
• Accrue: $1.58M (Seed, Lattice Fund-led) — Payments
• Zazu: $1M (Y Combinator et al.) — SME Banking
• NjiaPay: $1M+ (Pre-seed) — Payments

LOGISTICS/DELIVERY:

• Chowdeck: $9M (Series A) — Food Delivery

CLEANTECH:

• Rana Energy: $3M — Clean Energy/Climate Tech
• Salpha Energy: $1.3M (All On/Shell fund) — Renewable Energy
• SunFi: $1M (Series A) — Renewable Energy

EDTECH & AGRITECH:

• JADA: $1M (Series A) — EdTech/AI Training
• Startbutton, Cubbes, Forti Foods, Raba: $0.1M each (Pre-seed)

Fintech Dominated Everything

FINTECH TOTAL: ~$171.4M

EVERYTHING ELSE: ~$15.7M

91% of deployed capital went into a single sector — even though fintech represented less than half of total deal count.

This wasn’t a one-off.

The Five-Year Pattern: Infrastructure vs Applications

To understand how dominant fintech has become, let’s compare it to the sector that should be its biggest competitor: B2B e-commerce and logistics.

Nigeria has perfect conditions for logistics tech:

• 200+ million people
• Massive informal retail (58% of GDP)
• Broken distribution infrastructure
• Surging e-commerce demand

Yet this is what happened:

Over five years, fintech raised 27x more capital than logistics.

THE NUMBERS

How The Story Played Out

2020 — The Starting Gap

• Fintech: $439M
• Logistics: $0.8M

Fintech already had an overwhelming lead.

2021 — The Brief Hope

• Fintech: $1.1B
• Logistics: $110M

Logistics peaked — entirely driven by 2–3 mega deals.

2022–2025 — The Collapse
Logistics funding collapsed:

• $110M → $15M → ~$0 → $2M → $9M

Fintech stayed resilient:

• $1.2B → $410M → $410M → $171M

From 2021’s peak of $110M, logistics fell 95% to just $9M in 2025.

Fintech maintained $400M+ annually for three straight years.

The inflection point was 2021.

That year, while logistics peaked at $110M (all a mega-deal), fintech exploded to $1.1 billion — spreading across dozens of deals, multiple sectors (payments, lending, crypto), and building actual infrastructure.

WHY LOGISTICS FUNDING CONTRACTED

The Big Deals Were Illusions

Look at logistics’ “peak” in 2021:

TradeDepot: $110M wasn't really logistics it was for Buy-Now-Pay-Later product. (credit infrastructure).

The biggest logistics rounds were actually fintech in disguise.

and then

The Global “VC Winter” Hit Logistics Hardest

Transport and logistics funding in Africa collapsed from 2022 to 2023, while fintech held steady at $410M both years.

When capital tightened: VC Risk Preferences Changed

why?

• Logistics = (asset-heavy, thin margins, operational risk)
• Fintech = (digital-first, scalable, strong unit economics)

VCs didn’t abandon logistics because they stopped believing in commerce. They realized logistics couldn’t scale without infrastructure underneath.

Why Fintech keeps Winning

1. It solves Infrastructure Gaps

Fintech filled what banks couldn’t:

• Payments rails
• Credit access
• FX protection
• Identity and compliance

These aren’t “nice to haves.” They’re missing pieces of the financial system. Fintechs stepped in to fill these gaps with mobile wallets, USSD banking, alternative credit scoring using payment history, and stablecoin infrastructure for dollar-pegged savings.

Moniepoint didn’t build a better bank — it built banking infrastructure in 300,000 agent locations, bringing financial services to areas banks won’t serve. The company completed 5.2 billion transactions in 2023.

Anchor didn’t build another payment app — it built APIs that let other companies embed payments, payroll, and lending. The platform processed ₦1 trillion (~$650M) in transactions in 2024.

Kredete isn’t just another lending platform — it’s stablecoin-backed credit infrastructure that solves both the lending gap and currency risk simultaneously.

2. Better Unit Economics

The business models tell the story:

Fintech Infrastructure:

• Digital-first (low marginal costs)
• Transaction fees scale with volume
• Network effects (more users = more valuable)
• High switching costs (integrated into customers’ core systems)

Logistics/B2B Commerce:

• Asset-heavy (warehouses, trucks, inventory)
• Thin margins (typically 3–5%)
• High customer acquisition costs
• Operational complexity (theft, spoilage, route optimization)

3. Regulation Favours Fintech

The Nigerian government actively supported fintech growth in 2024–2025:

• CBN lifted its ban on banks servicing crypto businesses (December 2023)
• Launched open banking frameworks and fintech sandboxes (2024)
• SEC introduced the Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Program (ARIP) for crypto firms
• Approved crypto exchanges
• Strengthened KYC/AML rules, building credibility with investors

These fintech-friendly reforms rebuilt investor confidence. As a result, Nigeria remained a core market for fintech capital in recent years.

Meanwhile, logistics received no special infrastructure support, no regulatory fast-tracks, and no government backing.

4. Proof of Scale Exists

Fintech demonstrated it could actually scale in African conditions:

• Nigeria processed $1.68 trillion in mobile-money transactions in 2024
• Flutterwave reached ~$3B valuation
• OPay achieved $2B valuation with 50M users and $12B/month in volume

Logistics is still proving its economics.

5. The Infrastructure-First Thesis

VCs realized a fundamental truth: you need the rails before you can run the trains.

Not:

“What apps look good?”

But:

“What rails must exist before anything else works?”

Infrastructure first. Applications later.

That’s the playbook.

The market is clear: build the infrastructure first. Consumer apps come after.

that is why a number of logistics companies that lived — mutated:

THE SURVIVORS ALL PIVOTED TO INFRASTRUCTURE

• TradeDepot → credit infrastructure
• OmniRetail → embedded credit (Omnipay, now disbursing ₦19B/month)
• Fez → POS distribution for fintechs
• OPay → pivoted from mobility into payments

Logistics had to become fintech to survive.

The Real Truth

Nigerian commerce models without embedded financial infrastructure have struggled to scale.

Logistics companies aren’t competing with other logistics companies.

They’re competing with fintech’s;

• Unit economics
• Network effects
• Regulatory tailwinds

What This Means for 2026

If 2025 showed fintech infrastructure dominating everything else, 2026 will double down on that thesis.

Expect More Funding For:

• Credit infrastructure (alternative scoring, stablecoin-backed lending)
• Payment rails (cross-border, remittances, merchant infrastructure)
• Embedded finance APIs (payroll, insurance, wealth management)
• Stablecoin and crypto infrastructure (dollar savings, instant settlement)
• B2B tools and developer platforms

Expect Less Funding For:

• Pure logistics
• B2B marketplaces without credit
• Consumer apps without rails underneath

The CoreThesis

Nigerian VCs are funding the operating system, not the apps. They’re betting on:

• Companies solving fundamental infrastructure gaps
• B2B models with better unit economics than B2C
• Platforms that other businesses must use
• Digital-first models that can scale without massive operational costs

For Founders

If you’re building in Nigeria in 2026, ask yourself:

• Am I building infrastructure or building on infrastructure?
• Does my business model require expensive physical operations, or can it scale digitally?
• Am I solving a fundamental gap, or building a “better version” of something that exists?

The market has spoken. Infrastructure wins.

The Bigger Picture

This isn’t about fintech being “hot.” It’s about fintech solving fundamental infrastructure problems that were blocking everything else from scaling.

You can’t build efficient logistics without digital payments. You can’t scale B2B commerce without embedded credit. You can’t serve informal retailers without mobile money infrastructure.

Nigerian VCs figured this out. They’re funding the picks and shovels, not the miners.

And once those rails are built — the payment infrastructure, the credit systems, the identity layers, the compliance tools — then consumer apps can scale on top.

And that single insight explains 91% of capital concentration in 2025.

2026 will test this thesis.
All signs point to it holding.

Data & Methodology

This analysis is based on publicly disclosed equity rounds for Nigeria-based startups from January to December 2025, sourced from press releases, VC disclosures, and industry reporting platforms including TechCabal, Techpoint, BusinessDay, and TechCrunch. Debt financing, grants, and fund closes (e.g., Ventures Platform’s $64M Fund II) are excluded. Figures are approximations based on available data; not all deals disclose exact amounts

Why Nigerian VCs Bet $3.73B on Fintech and Only $137M on Logistics: The Infrastructure-First Thesis was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Every CEO knows the feeling. You ask your team for the numbers you need for a...

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