Why Nigerian VCs Bet $3.73B on Fintech and Only $137M on Logistics: The Infrastructure-First Thesis

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

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:

But:

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.