To many Nigerians, Piggyvest’s journey has been nothing short of awe-inspiring and, as its 10^th anniversary approaches, the company seems poised for even further growth. On the product side, the company is gearing up to launch new features in the second half of 2025, including Flex Dollar virtual US account numbers and a Safelock Dollar product. The virtual US account numbers will allow for direct dollar transfers to users’ Flex Dollar wallets, while the Safelock Dollar product will enable users to stow away dollars for a fixed period of time.

Looking further ahead, Piggyvest is hoping to fill a critical gap in Nigeria’s financial ecosystem by launching a product that helps people budget and manage their finances better. As Chibueze explained to me,

Your bank cannot tell you how much you spent on laundry or groceries in the last three months. People resort to interesting ways of figuring these things out themselves, creating Excel spreadsheets just to try and track where their money is going. But we want to answer this question directly. A lot of our users tend to oversave and then run to the app later to break their savings lock after exhausting their funds for the month. On the business end, it means we get to earn more revenue from penalty fees, but it’s still a problem we want to fix for our users. Yes, we’re helping you save and invest, but how can we help you manage your money even better?

While on the surface, building such a product presents the risk of cutting Piggyvest’s revenues, Chibueze insists that it will have the opposite effect, as it will further boost customers’ trust in the company. ‘When you can create value for customers like no other company does, they’ll trust you the most, and that trust translates to increased patronage,’ Chibueze said. This is another pointer to Piggyvest’s commitment to remaining at the intersection of impact and profit.

Expansion is also on the horizon. In the recent past, Piggyvest had expressed interest in expanding to countries with similar macroeconomic conditions to Nigeria’s—like Thailand for instance—as opposed to the expected intracontinental expansion. However, as Eweniyi revealed to me, the company is now eyeing expansion to countries with large Nigerian diaspora communities, given the rising Japa (brain drain) wave. ‘We’ve struck a balance in our outlook now. We’re considering markets that have similar macros but also large Nigerian diaspora connections—countries like Canada, South Africa and even some European countries,’ Eweniyi shared.

While Nigeria’s increasing emigration rate presents opportunities for Piggyvest’s expansion plans, Eweniyi fears that it may not bode well for the local talent pool. She explained that:

The Nigerian fintech industry has some of the brightest minds that I’ve ever seen. But we’re losing them to exhaustion, economic challenges and so on—essentially, the underlying reasons for Japa. People have always left their countries, but it’s happening so much in Nigeria now because so many Nigerians cannot see a clear path from A to success, so they’d like to go somewhere where they can see clearer. We still have a lot of smart people in Nigeria, but so many of them are one leg in, one leg out, meaning they’ll leave the country as soon as they get the opportunity to. But what happens when we no longer have smart people to pick from?

Still, Eweniyi believes that ‘there is magic being worked’ in the local industry. Nigerian fintechs are already building products that provide brilliant solutions to African problems, but the solutions need to become global in nature for the local industry to be elevated on the global stage. ‘My hope is that we’re able to realize that very lofty ambition, and also that we have regulations that foster creativity while still protecting users,’ Eweniyi said.

For Ifezue, the future of the Nigerian fintech industry looks like what he calls ‘embedded finance’. He projects that payments and savings will be woven into ‘the everyday platforms where people already earn, spend and live their lives.’ For instance, food delivery startup Chowdeck and grocery delivery startup GoLemon recently integrated wallet features wherein users have already started saving money for food and groceries. But to take it a step further, Ifezue envisions systems whereby money can be directly deducted from users’ income and set aside for various savings needs, thereby removing the willpower barrier to financial discipline. He added: ‘For small businesses, this will also be transformative. A merchant could automatically set aside tax obligations or build a 30-day cash buffer with every sale.’ To better position themselves for such a transition, Piggyvest is fully launching Piggyvest Business as a subsidiary that will offer bundles like wallet-as-a-service and treasury-as-a-service integrated in an API to interested companies. He said:

But alongside these opportunities, there are serious challenges. Reliability remains a big one. If payments fail or settlements are delayed, trust collapses very quickly. Fraud and social engineering are another concern; the more seamless the flow, the more vulnerable users can be. Regulatory clarity will also be key, especially with open banking, data privacy, and consumer protection.

My overall thesis, however, is that if we get this right, embedded finance becomes the operating system of daily life in Nigeria. People won’t need to think about moving money or setting money aside. It will happen by design, with consent, transparency, and reliability. For individuals, this means effortless consistency in their savings and resilience against shocks. For SMEs, it means healthier cashflow and fewer unpleasant surprises. And for the ecosystem as a whole, it means lower costs, stronger rails, and true financial inclusion. That’s the future I’m betting on: payments and savings that are invisible but dependable and embedded everywhere the customer already is.

For many users, Piggyvest’s growth story, especially against the backdrop of Nigeria’s volatile economy, has also been their growth story. ‘My Piggyvest W.A.E.C score has steadily grown from C to B and now, I’m gunning for an A at the end of the year,’ Edegware told me, referring to the Wealth Accrued & Expanded Consistently (W.A.E.C) results that Piggyvest introduced in 2019 to help users assess their relationship with money. Users can score between A1 and F9—similar to the eponymous West African Examination Council (WAEC) secondary school board examination—depending on how well they saved and invested on the app over the year. Faced with a local currency that has lost a tenth of its value against the dollar in the time Piggyvest has been around, few Nigerians can claim to have a source of personalized monetary stability let alone protection. And perhaps it is here that Piggyvest truly shines. ‘It’s quite easy to lose that touch as companies expand and costs rise,’ Edegware cautioned when I asked her about the future and what, as a customer, she hoped the next 10 years of Piggyvest could look like. ‘Customer care units get downgraded or replaced with AI, but that personal connection is one of their key selling points,’ she emphasized. As the company steps into its tenth year, launching new products and preparing to compete more directly with international fintech players, the trust and loyalty it has built at home may very well be its greatest strength⎈