Interswitch — Companies

Why it is on record

Built Nigeria's interbank switching backbone (Verve, Quickteller); became Africa's first widely-recognised fintech unicorn ($1bn+ valuation, Visa investment 2019).

Record held

First Nigerian fintech unicorn.

Founders

Mitchell Elegbe (b. 1972).

Headquarters

Plot 1648C, Oko-Awo Close, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Lineage / corporate history

Interswitch Limited incorporated 2002; rolled out the first electronic-payments switch in Nigeria; launched Quickteller (2010) and Verve (2011) — Nigeria's first indigenous payment card scheme. Visa took a ~20% equity stake in November 2019 at a valuation north of $1bn, making Interswitch Africa's first unicorn outside South Africa.

Current leadership

Group CEO: Mitchell Elegbe.

Deep dive

Interswitch is the foundational infrastructure of Nigerian electronic payments. Founded in 2002 by Mitchell Elegbe, it built and operates the national interbank switching system (the Verve card scheme, the QuickTeller platform, the InterswitchNet processing backbone) that connects every Nigerian commercial bank and ATM. It is the single point of cardinal failure — and cardinal success — of Nigerian retail payments: when Interswitch is down, Nigerian banking is down.

The company's 2019 transaction with Visa (a minority equity investment that valued Interswitch at over $1 billion) made it the first Nigerian fintech unicorn. The long-promised IPO has been deferred repeatedly through 2020–2024 amid FX and market-window concerns, but Interswitch remains the most institutionally significant African fintech outside the M-Pesa system.