Verve International (Verve), the dominant payment card scheme in Nigeria has announced the acceptance of their cards on AliExpress, a popular e-commerce site.
“We are excited to announce that Verve is now accepted on AliExpress, a globally recognised e-commerce leader. This marks a significant milestone in our global expansion journey, reflecting our commitment to providing cardholders with access to more possibilities in today’s digital economy,” says Vincent Ogbunude, Managing Director, Verve International in a statement.
The partnership between Verve and AliExpress means that Verve cards—denominated in local currency—will now work on AliExpress.
Being a card scheme, Verve does not directly issue its cards to customers. Rather, they work with issuing partners like Banks, and other financial institutions. Thus, Nigerian customers of banks, and fintechs like OPay and Moniepoint, with Verve-branded cards, can now spend their money on AliExpress.
AliExpress joins a growing list of international merchants that Verve has partnered with. Other renowned brands include “Google, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Facebook, Uber, and Spotify,” according to the company.
In markets, like Nigeria, where capital controls have made access to foreign currency for international payments near-impossible, being able to pay in local currency presents a lifeline to customers. Stakeholders in the payment value chain are taking note. Four months ago, global payments giant Stripe started piloting local payments for Nigerians purchasing from US merchants. Similarly, AliExpress added fellow Chinese-owned brand, OPay as a direct payment method on its checkout page.
To shop on AliExpress with Verve cards, cardholders can add their card details at the point of checkout.
Verve card’s growth tear—over 40% YoY in the last two years
Verve has been a resilient player in Nigeria’s card-issuing space. They have ridden the highs and lows of the market to come out on top.
In 2013, they reportedly owned 60% of the payment card-issuing market “with over 16 million cards issued by 20 banks“. Ten years later, they have a similar market share, despite heavy investments from MasterCard and Visa. Only this time, Verve has quadrupled its card-issued volume to over 70 million cards.
Growth for Verve has come from an unlikely place, wallet-issuing fintechs, which were not around when they started.
It took Verve about 10 years to double to 32 million cards. But it has taken them just two years to double from 35 million in 2022 to 70 million in 2024. Fifteen-year-old Verve is growing like a young startup, at 40% year-on-year. And if it continues this trend, it will hit 100 million cards issued in 2025.
Verve’s partnership with OPay in October 2022, has already seen the latter issue over 13 million cards. “Verve has become the payment card of choice across various tiers of banking services and particularly within the burgeoning fintech space in Nigeria,” the company said in July 2023. “It would be recalled that in October 2022, Verve and Opay announced a significant partnership in Nigeria, rolling out the OPay Verve Instant Debit Card…”
Similarly, TechCabal reports that Moniepoint has issued over five million Verve cards. OPay and Moniepoint’s numbers combined accounted for 17 million Verve cards issued. This count is inline with the reported 20 million new cards between 2023 and 2024 that Verve announced. “…We are greatly delighted again at this point to celebrate another phenomenal milestone, having added 20 million new payment cards to our base in Nigeria, for which we are extremely appreciative of our issuing partners as well as our loyal cardholders…” Ogbunude said in October 2024 announcing their 70 million card-issued milestone.
How Interswitch decides on products to build vs infrastructure
Founded in 2002, Interswitch started as the switching infrastructure for banks before it began dabbling into consumer-facing products.
In a conversation with Mitchell Elegbe, he explained that "...the infrastructure play will always be our bread and butter. Now, if there are gaps, we will go in [to build products]. So, Verve was a clear gap, nobody was bold enough to go in, so we went in..."
Verve was a clear gap, nobody was bold enough to go in, so we went in...
Mitchell Elegbe (2021)
Indeed, veteran Technology writer with two decades of experience, Sola Fanawopo wrote, "In 2003, it became imperative for Interswitch to commence a card scheme because global payment brands then categorised Nigeria as a high risk market."
Banks tried to lure global payment card brands to Nigeria but were not having much success. Simultaneously, the CBN was pushing for chip-and-PIN cards and declared a directive for all banks to migrate by 2009.
"The directive presented opportunities for the global card schemes, particularly VISA that had already invested in a local processing outfit, ValuCard, to overrun the card industry. In fact, the industry was unanimous in its positions that the only saving grace for Interswitch to be relevant in the card scheme is to form a synergy with MasterCard. Yes, the industry was right and at the same time wrong." Fanawopo added.
Interswitch got EMV certified, invested in designing their own EMV chip and PIN card and launched in 2008 (officially, 2009). In just three months of going live officially, it issued six million cards through its bank partner. Let's call this era, Verve 1.0.
Today, Verve issues physical and virtual payment cards. Its cards work at physical payment touchpoints like PoS terminals, and ATMs as well as online; e-commerce stores.
Interswitch will later go on to launch Quickteller in 2010, as a consumer-facing brand for bills payments, transfers and other value-added services.
"...the ultimate goal is to make our competitors partners, as we like to call them, feel comfortable working with us because that is how we win," Mitchell told me.
Being a financial services conglomerate, it's impossible to not compete with some of your customers and partners. Sometimes, this can even lead to unfavourable business practices where a service provider favours its products over its partner's. But also, having multiple products could be a distraction from going deep into each of them. A holding company, advocated by regulators, solves this to a large extent.
So, in 2013, Interswitch with a payment processing (Purepay), payment cards (Verve), and VAS platform (Quickteller) evolved into Interswitch Transnational Holdings.
The payment card product became its own company, Verve International. This spin-off I will say is Verve 2.0—as the subsidiary came of age and became responsible for its profit & loss, leading to multiple growth initiatives aimed at improving its bottom line.
Today, sister company, Quickteller issues Verve cards and pays Verve International for it. Likewise, they uses Interswitch processing infrastructure and pay Interswitch Purepay for the service.
As we have seen above, Verve 3.0 is marked by the proliferation of consumer fintechs. Also, supported by the tough foreign exchange- and macroeconomic climate. How long will this era last and will the cards issuing business be able to grow 40% for a third year running?
