Google Wallet and Google Pay officially launched in Nigeria on 28 October, allowing eligible Android and Wear OS users to make contactless payments in physical stores, apps and online. However, the launch has exposed a significant gap in the country's digital payments market, with customers of major fintech platforms, including OPay, Kuda, PalmPay, and Moniepoint, unable to access the service.
At launch, Google Pay support was limited to cards issued by four tier-one banks: FirstBank, GTBank, United Bank for Africa (UBA) and Zenith Bank. The service currently supports Visa and Mastercard, leaving millions of customers who rely on Nigeria's leading digital banking platforms outside its initial rollout.
The exclusion has attracted attention online, with users questioning how widely contactless payments can gain acceptance if some of Nigeria's most popular financial platforms remain unsupported.
For OPay and Moniepoint, the absence of their customers from Google Pay is largely linked to decisions made years before the service arrived in Nigeria. Both fintech companies moved away from Visa and Mastercard towards domestic card schemes, primarily because of the costs associated with operating international card programmes.
Visa and Mastercard charge fees in US dollars, making their services increasingly expensive as the naira weakened. Operating an international card programme also involves implementation fees reportedly running into thousands of dollars monthly, offshore account requirements and collateral commitments that can reach millions of dollars.
These costs became increasingly difficult to justify, particularly as many customers used their cards predominantly for domestic point-of-sale transactions.
Meanwhile, Verve, Nigeria's domestic card scheme, had already secured 54 per cent of the country's card market by 2021. The Central Bank of Nigeria's support for developing local payment infrastructure further strengthened the case for fintech companies to adopt homegrown alternatives.
OPay has issued more than 13 million Verve cards, while Moniepoint has also adopted the domestic payment network, although it has not disclosed its total number of cards issued. PalmPay introduced Verve debit cards in 2025.
Kuda, however, presents a different situation. Unlike the other fintech platforms, it issues Visa cards directly through a partnership established several years ago. Its absence from Google's initial list of supported card issuers is therefore more difficult to explain.
The underlying issue is that Google Pay does not connect directly to a bank's payment infrastructure. Instead, it relies on a token service provider operated by card networks to enable secure contactless transactions. In Nigeria, Visa and Mastercard are currently the two networks with established tokenisation services compatible with Google Pay.
Google does not independently activate every bank's cards. Instead, it works with token service providers, which create secure digital versions of physical payment cards, allowing smartphones to function as substitutes for traditional debit and credit cards.
Visa and Mastercard operate global tokenisation services that are already integrated with Google Pay across several countries. Banks issuing cards through either network can activate the functionality after completing Google's certification requirements.
Verve, however, does not yet have an equivalent integration with Google. Consequently, banks and fintech companies issuing Verve cards cannot offer Google Pay functionality, regardless of their size or position in Nigeria's financial services market.
Verve and Google have previously collaborated on a more limited arrangement. In 2023, the companies partnered to enable Verve cardholders to make payments for Google Play Store purchases in naira. However, that agreement did not extend to Google Wallet's contactless payment infrastructure, which requires a different technical integration.
Beyond card compatibility, Nigeria's payment infrastructure presents another challenge to the widespread adoption of Google Pay.
Although the country had nearly six million active point-of-sale terminals out of more than eight million registered devices, according to an industry estimate from early 2025, contactless-enabled terminals remain relatively uncommon. There is no publicly available figure establishing the proportion of these devices capable of processing contactless payments.
The Central Bank of Nigeria also has separate regulations governing contactless transactions, including limits on payment amounts before customers are required to authenticate transactions using a PIN or other verification method. These restrictions could further limit the functionality of tap-to-pay services, even where compatible terminals are available.
Meanwhile, Verve, Moniepoint and PalmPay are exploring alternative routes through AfriGO, Nigeria's domestic card scheme, which has distributed its own contactless cards. This provides another pathway for expanding tap-to-pay transactions without depending on Google's payment ecosystem.
Looking ahead, one of the biggest developments to watch is whether Verve secures tokenisation integration with Google. Such an agreement could potentially extend Google Pay access to banks and fintech companies issuing Verve cards, including OPay and Moniepoint.
Kuda's position is another important consideration. Since the fintech already issues Visa cards, its continued absence from the supported list raises questions about the technical, certification or commercial requirements yet to be resolved.
Ultimately, the success of Google Pay in Nigeria will depend not only on expanding the number of supported banks and card networks but also on improving the availability of contactless-enabled payment terminals across the country.
For now, customers of OPay, Moniepoint, Kuda and PalmPay remain outside the initial rollout. None of the four fintech companies has publicly commented on its exclusion from Google's launch partners.
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