Nigerian PoS banking Agency Crashes as Owner Battles N19.9bn Debt and Failed Sale

Nigeria’s agency banking industry has recorded a major shake-up following the shutdown of Baxi, the prominent Point-of-Sale operator owned by pan-African payments company Onafriq.

 

The closure, announced on October 16, 2026, came after months of unsuccessful efforts to sell the business amid mounting financial pressure, declining revenue and rising operating costs.

 

According to audited financial statements filed by Onafriq in the United Kingdom, the company had been in talks to sell 100 percent of its Nigerian agency banking business to an unidentified buyer under a non-binding agreement. The proposed deal was still unresolved as of July 29, when the accounts were approved, and the October announcement did not clarify if negotiations had formally collapsed.

 

Financial records showed that Onafriq’s Nigerian subsidiary, Onafriq Nigeria Payments Limited, had outstanding bank overdrafts totaling N19.9 billion as of July 2026, comprising N13.8 billion with Zenith Bank and N6.1 billion with Stanbic IBTC Bank, equivalent to about $15 million.

 

The company’s performance also deteriorated sharply. Revenue from agency services fell by 56 percent from $30.4 million in 2023 to $13.4 million in 2024, while gross profit dropped by 65 percent from $13.4 million to $4.7 million, despite operating costs falling from $17 million to $8.7 million. Onafriq subsequently wrote off $4.56 million in goodwill associated with the business in 2024, after a $2.4 million impairment in 2023.

 

Onafriq attributed the shutdown to persistent inflation, naira depreciation, rising expenses and shrinking margins, worsened by the growing shift to account-to-account transfers which has weakened offline payment networks.

 

The exit is striking given the broader growth of Nigeria’s PoS market. Data from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System shows PoS transaction values surged by 79 percent to N18.78 trillion in the first quarter of 2026, while deployed terminals rose from 2.45 million in 2023 to 5.56 million in 2024. However, transaction volumes grew by just 8 percent in 2024, pointing to intensifying competition for each payment.

 

Major players like Moniepoint have consolidated their dominance, reporting over one million active terminals in Nigeria by 2026.

 

Baxi was acquired by Onafriq, then trading as MFS Africa, in 2021 and received Central Bank of Nigeria approval in March 2022. At the time, it had over 90,000 agents processing more than $1.6 billion annually, a network that later expanded to over 460,000 agents by 2025.

 

Following the shutdown, the company said it had transferred affected agents to another principal bank and opened a 30-day window for them to move their funds to their preferred bank. It added that it would retain its Nigerian payments network and card-issuing operations.

 

The development underscores the growing pressure on agency banking operators, where rising transaction values and terminal numbers do not automatically translate into sustainable profitability.