The archive · Money & Fintech · Product decision · 2016–2026
PiggyVest's savings bet: from 2016 digital kolo to ₦1.3T payouts and 6M users
PiggyVest bet Nigerians would automate saving; from a 2016 tweet it grew to 6M+ users and ₦1.3T payouts in 2025, up 56% from ₦835B in 2024.
PiggyVest
What the business is
Online savings and investment platform that automates deposits, pays interest and offers goal-based saving.
How it started
On 1 January 2016 Joshua Chibueze tweeted about digitising the kolo, the wooden box many Nigerian households save in; Odunayo Eweniyi replied first, and with co-founder Somto Ifezue they launched PiggyBank.ng in February 2016 — later renamed PiggyVest — to let medium-to-low-income Nigerians automate savings and earn 6–10% interest (Wired UK).
What happened
Smart Target (May 2018) was modelled on ajo, the Yoruba group-saving practice, while the core app automated the discipline a kolo demanded; by end-2018, 53,000+ users had saved close to ₦1B. In 2024 PiggyVest added PiggyVest Business for small enterprises and moved payments in-house through its PocketApp subsidiary. In 2025 it paid users ₦1.3T (+56% from ₦835B in 2024) and doubled assets under management (Wired UK; BusinessDay).
How it ended up
Still scaling: as of July 2026 PiggyVest had paid out over ₦3T in its decade, served 6M+ users, and was named to CNBC/Statista's World's Top Fintech Companies 2026 list — the only Nigerian firm in the Wealth Technology category — while preparing a PiggyVest Kids product for 2026 (BusinessDay; PiggyVest blog).
Background
PiggyVest started with a tweet: on 1 January 2016 Joshua Chibueze proposed digitising the kolo, the wooden box many Nigerian households save in. Odunayo Eweniyi replied first, and with co-founder Somto Ifezue they launched PiggyBank.ng in February 2016 — later renamed PiggyVest — to let medium-to-low-income Nigerians automate savings and earn 6–10% interest (Wired UK).
The design borrowed from tradition: Smart Target (May 2018) was modelled on ajo, the Yoruba group-saving practice, while the core app automated the discipline a kolo demanded. By end-2018, 53,000+ users had saved close to ₦1B. In 2024 the company added PiggyVest Business and brought payments in-house through PocketApp.
The bet scaled: in 2025 PiggyVest paid users ₦1.3T, up 56% from ₦835B in 2024, passed 6M registered users, and doubled assets under management. In July 2026 it was named to CNBC/Statista's World's Top Fintech Companies list — the only Nigerian company in the Wealth Technology category — having paid out over ₦3T since 2016 (BusinessDay; PiggyVest blog).
What has to be true
- It automated an existing habit — the kolo box and ajo — rather than asking users to change their money behaviour.
- Payouts, not marketing, built trust: withdrawals arrived reliably, and re-deposits compounded to ₦1.3T paid out in a single year.
- It served the informally banked majority that traditional banks ignored, at a time when fewer than 37M Nigerian adults had bank accounts.
- A decade of consistent operation turned a savings tool into a national financial utility recognised by CNBC and Statista.
What can be applied
Don't invent the behaviour, digitise it: PiggyVest won by automating the kolo and ajo habits Nigerians already had, and by treating reliable payouts — not hype — as the growth engine.
Aftermath
As of 21 July 2026, PiggyVest is Nigeria's leading digital savings platform: 6M+ registered users, ₦1.3T paid out in 2025, ₦3T+ cumulative payouts over ten years, and assets under management up 110% in 2025. It made CNBC/Statista's 2026 World's Top Fintech Companies list for the third consecutive year — the only Nigerian firm in the Wealth Technology category — and is expanding PiggyVest Business for SMEs while planning a PiggyVest Kids product around Children's Day 2026.
Sources
- Nigeria is quietly rewriting fintech's rulebook
- PiggyVest payouts surge to N1.3tn in 2025 as user base reaches 6m
- PiggyVest is a 2026 CNBC World's Top Fintech Company
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