Tosin Eniolorunda, the mechanical engineer who built Nigeria’s biggest fintech 💡

A mechanical engineer turned fintech architect — that’s perhaps the most concise way to describe Tosin Eniolorunda’s career. Co-founder and CEO of Moniepoint, he built a technology platform that connects small and medium-sized businesses across Africa to banking services, starting with Nigeria.

Moniepoint: the all-in-one financial platform 💳

At the core of the product is a platform that handles payments, bank account management and bill settlement — all from a single interface. SMEs, the company’s primary target, can now track their entire financial activity through tools built around the realities of their daily operations. For Eniolorunda, serving this segment of entrepreneurs was never an arbitrary choice: SMEs are the backbone of Nigeria’s economy, and giving them access to reliable financial infrastructure means strengthening the entire economic system around them.

An engineer whose journey speaks for itself 🚀

Eniolorunda holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, graduating in 2007. His first professional steps came in 2005, through an internship at energy company Schlumberger. But it was at Interswitch — one of Africa’s leading digital payments companies — that his career in tech truly took off, starting in 2009. He spent six years there, moving through roles as a software engineer and head of operations, before leaving in 2015 to co-found what would become Moniepoint alongside Felix Ike. His trajectory captures something consistent across Africa’s tech builders: engineering as the gateway to financial innovation.

From modest beginnings, Moniepoint has built out a network of agents and point-of-sale terminals designed to function even where internet connectivity is unreliable — a structural constraint across African markets that many traditional banking solutions have never seriously addressed. That combination of solid digital infrastructure and on-the-ground presence has earned Moniepoint the trust of millions of small merchants who had long been shut out of formal banking. Eniolorunda’s view is clear: technology doesn’t replace traditional banks — it corrects what they failed to provide. A pragmatic position that, across Nigeria and the broader continent, is beginning to reshape how entrepreneurs relate to financial services.

Tosin Eniolorunda’s story shows that African engineers don’t need to leave the continent to rewrite its financial rules. Which sector in Cameroon or across Africa needs a founder like him next? Drop your thoughts in the comments.