The conversation around digital payments in Nigeria has long been dominated by speed and ease of use. Both traditional banks and fintech startups have spent years perfecting instant transfers and seamless onboarding, making it possible to move funds across the country in the blink of an eye. While these engineering milestones are impressive, the rapid pace of our financial lives has inadvertently opened the door to new vulnerabilities, specifically in the areas of digital fraud and personal privacy.
In the current landscape, every time you share an account number to receive a payment, you are handing over more than just a set of digits. You are often revealing your full name, your bank, and a trail of your financial habits. For many fintech users whose account numbers are tied directly to their mobile phone numbers, the privacy risk is even more pronounced.
Chika Okere, the founder of the Nigerian fintech Flex, believes the real weakness in our payment system isn’t the technology behind the transfers, but the amount of sensitive data exposed during every transaction. Okere argues that fraud is rarely the result of a single, massive security breach. Instead, it is built from fragments—a name here, a phone number there, or an account number shared in a casual transfer. Eventually, these pieces allow bad actors to impersonate victims or carry out sophisticated social engineering attacks.
To address this, Flex has introduced paytags, which are unique identifiers that allow users to move money without ever showing their actual account numbers. While the concept of usernames isn’t entirely new, the rising tide of financial crime in Nigeria has made such a solution more relevant than ever. By placing a “paytag” between a person’s identity and their transaction, the startup is essentially creating a digital firewall.
The inspiration for this idea came from a simple personal encounter. Okere recalls asking a parking attendant for his account number to pay for a spot when he was low on cash. On his next visit, he was surprised to hear the attendant address him by his middle name—a name he rarely uses in public. This realization that a simple transfer could leak such personal details led him to rethink how we handle money.
The goal of this initiative is not to replace the existing banking infrastructure but to mask it. By using a pseudonym, the sensitive details of a transaction stay in the background while only the tag is visible to the parties involved. It brings the Nigerian experience closer to global models like Cash App, where the focus is on the transaction point rather than the bank vault itself. Much like how ride-hailing apps now mask phone numbers to protect drivers and riders, the payment industry seems to be reaching a point where exposing raw banking details is no longer the safest or most preferred option.
