In the crowded, ever-evolving world of Nigerian fintech, where Moniepoint and OPay dominate headlines and investor decks, it’s easy to miss the quieter, more local revolutions happening away from Lagos. Yet in the heart of Northern Nigeria, two longtime friends — Bello Kano and Tayo Akintoye — are rewriting the playbook on financial inclusion, not with billion-dollar backing, but with an idea born from ₦400,000 ($285) and a shared belief: that the future of banking is personal.

Kano and Akintoye started as Point-of-Sale (PoS) agents in 2018, during the era of Firstmonie — well before agency banking became a nationwide phenomenon. But even then, they knew they weren’t just agents.

“The day we started,” Kano recalled in an interview with Tech Point Africa, “we knew we were more than that.”

They were right. Within three years, their modest startup capital had grown into a ₦50 million ($35,700) business, driven by a simple but powerful advantage: trust.

But service alone doesn’t build a financial empire, especially not in Northern Nigeria, where bank branches are scarce and infrastructure remains uneven. What set them apart was Kano’s ability to build something from nothing — not just a customer base, but an entire market.

From Dust to Digital

Image Credit: Nairaland

Kano’s big idea came not from a spreadsheet, but from the street. He saw small-time gadget vendors hawking their wares along dusty roadsides — phones, batteries, chargers, spare parts — with nowhere formal to do business. Where others might have seen disorder, he saw opportunity.

They got land, designed, and built shops for them. While some investors would build shops these vendors couldn’t afford, they saw their value.

That value was liquidity. Kano created a mini "Computer Village" — a dense network of nearly 1,000 merchants, all of whom needed banking services in a region where ATMs and physical banks were few and far between.

Instead of letting cash pile up or requiring these traders to take long, risky trips to the bank, Kano and Akintoye gave them a better option.

They made it possible for them to deposit their cash with them for free. Some sellers were depositing as much as ₦5 million ($3,570) a day. That gave them more than enough liquidity for customers who needed to make withdrawals.

In a sense, they did more than bring the bank to the people — they created the people the bank needed. The genius of their model lay not in disrupting the system, but in deeply embedding within it. These were not just customers; they were stakeholders, neighbors, and partners.

Building BellBank

Image Credit: Techpoint Africa

It would have been easy for Kano and Akintoye to remain the de facto bankers of their digital village. But they wanted more. In 2022, they launched BellBank Microfinance Bank, a fintech startup designed not just to serve the unbanked but to reshape the very tools of financial inclusion.

We said no to offers from banks that wanted us to open accounts and distribute ATM cards, Kano explained. “We wanted to build our own company.”

The partners brought complementary strengths. Akintoye, now BellBank’s CTO, holds a computer science degree from the University of East London. Kano, the CEO, has the practical experience of building community infrastructure brick by brick. But their motivations ran deeper than profit. They were guided by the knowledge that Northern Nigeria, in spite of fintech’s rise, remains profoundly underserved.

Despite reaching a financial inclusion rate of 64% in 2023, about 28 million Nigerian adults — most of them in rural areas — remain excluded from formal banking. According to the 2023 Nigerian Financial Service Market Report, 21% of all PoS agents are clustered in Lagos, while the real need lies far from the city’s sprawl.

That’s where BellBank comes in.

A Voice in the Crowd

The team’s flagship product is not a new app or a flashy card — it’s a voice. More specifically, it’s a device called the BellBox, a compact speaker that announces payments out loud as soon as they are received. Think of it as a talking PoS device — but for just ₦5,000 ($3).

Traditional PoS machines, supplied by the likes of Moniepoint and OPay, can cost as much as ₦80,000 ($53). That might be feasible for an urban boutique or supermarket, but not for the suya or akara sellers — the heart of Nigeria’s informal economy.

The BellBox changes that. Inspired by China’s ubiquitous payment soundboxes — devices that read out transaction confirmations in real-time — the BellBox is Nigeria’s first homegrown equivalent. It doesn’t require a smartphone or even an internet connection. A small voice announces incoming transfers, giving peace of mind to both seller and buyer in noisy, chaotic market conditions.

“There’s no need to ask, ‘Did the alert come?’” Akintoye said. “The BellBox tells you instantly.”

Simplicity as Strategy

For all its technical simplicity, the BellBox could become one of Nigeria’s most transformative fintech tools. Its battery lasts up to seven days on a single charge, and it integrates with the Zone Payment Network, a modern infrastructure layer that processes transfers faster than older bank switches.

BellBank charges ₦5,000 ($3) for the device and a monthly subscription of ₦1,000 (less than $1) for ongoing services — making it affordable, even for low-margin vendors. But the real strategic move lies in scalability. The company plans to white-label the BellBox for banks and fintechs that want to offer it under their own brand, while BellBank supplies the backend tech.

That model could prove powerful: one-time device fees, recurring subscriptions, and institutional partnerships that drive steady revenue. It’s part of BellBank’s larger play — not just to build a bank, but to build infrastructure others will depend on.

A Question of Adoption

Of course, this is Nigeria — where payments are as fragmented as the population is diverse. Will merchants adopt the BellBox? Will banks see it as a threat or an opportunity?

The founders are cautiously optimistic. “We’re not just providing a device,” Kano said. “We’re providing trust — just like we did from day one.”

For all the cutting-edge rhetoric in fintech, trust remains the hardest currency to earn. BellBank has already done so once, by literally building a village from the ground up. If history is any guide, they might just do it again.

As Nigeria’s fintech giants continue to battle for dominance in urban markets, BellBank is quietly mapping a different path: rural, analog-friendly, and deeply human. And in a country where 28 million still live outside the banking system, that might be the most disruptive model of all.