After years of playing catch-up in Nigeria’s mobile money market, Airtel Nigeria is betting on incentives and physical distribution to force relevance for its mobile money arm, SmartCash. Since the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced Payment Service Banks (PSBs) in 2018, allowing telcos to offer limited financial services under strict regulatory rules, telecom-led fintechs have struggled to translate telecom scale into financial dominance. Despite its 60.89 million subscribers and position as Nigeria’s second-largest telco, Airtel’s SmartCash remains a marginal player in mobile money. SmartCash has just 2.2 million users in Nigeria and generated $6 million in revenue as of December 2025. These numbers are far off from fintech heavyweights like OPay and PalmPay, which already domina...