Lidya, a Nigerian-founded fintech once hailed for supporting small businesses with credit, is now facing serious operational issues that have left customers unable to access their funds for nearly a year. At the heart of the crisis is Lidya Collect, a loan repayment tool that was launched in 2023 to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) collect payments automatically from customers through debit mandates. However, since late 2023, users have reported being locked out of their wallets, unable to withdraw funds or get any form of response from the company.
A Promising Start Gone Wrong
Founded in 2016 by Jumia Nigeria co-founder Tunde Kehinde and former Jumia Africa COO Ercin Eksin, Lidya began with the mission to offer credit solutions tailored to SMEs in emerging markets. The startup quickly gained traction and expanded its operations into Poland and the Czech Republic in 2020. Despite raising $8.3 million in Series B funding, the company exited those European markets by 2023, stating a renewed focus on its home market and its new product, Lidya Collect.
Lidya Collect’s Failure to Deliver
Lidya Collect was introduced as a digital solution to simplify debt recovery by automatically debiting customers’ bank accounts and depositing the recovered amounts into SME wallets on the platform. For many Nigerian SMEs, this promised a streamlined method to improve cash flow and collections. Instead, it has turned into a financial nightmare, with businesses unable to retrieve their earnings and no effective customer support from the company.
Customer Complaints and Operational Fallout
According to reports from Techpoint Africa, numerous customers have sent emails and attempted to reach Lidya since 2023, with no resolution or acknowledgment. One customer, identified as Ola, explained that they have millions of naira (equivalent to tens of thousands of US dollars) stuck in the platform, with no choice but to manually chase after clients to recover debts. “It has been a horrible few months just trying to recover our money,” Ola said, underscoring the level of disruption this failure has caused.
Leadership Exodus Adds to Uncertainty
The financial difficulties experienced by Lidya’s users coincide with major shifts in the company’s leadership. In September 2024, Lidya’s Chief Technology Officer, Cristiano Machado, left the company, followed shortly by co-founder and CEO Tunde Kehinde, who officially exited in October 2024. When a customer contacted Kehinde in March 2025 about their locked funds, he explained he had already stepped away from daily operations and could not intervene.
New Leadership Amid Silence
Following Kehinde’s departure, Lidya’s board appointed Itunu Efunkoya as the company’s new CEO. However, under this new leadership, communication with affected customers has remained minimal to nonexistent. Many users remain in the dark about the status of their funds or whether any form of remediation or refund will be forthcoming.
A Crisis of Trust in Nigerian Fintech
The situation at Lidya represents a serious breach of trust in the fintech space, especially as Nigerian SMEs increasingly rely on digital tools for financial operations. With millions of transactions previously processed on the platform, the loss of access to funds not only threatens individual businesses but raises broader questions about oversight and accountability within the sector. As fintech adoption grows, the need for transparency and regulatory intervention becomes more urgent.
As of now, Lidya has not issued any public statement addressing customer complaints or detailing a recovery plan for affected funds. With its founding leadership gone and communication channels silent, the company's future—and that of the businesses depending on it—remains uncertain. Until action is taken, Lidya’s collapse will stand as a cautionary tale for both investors and entrepreneurs in Africa’s fast-growing fintech ecosystem.
Source: Techpoint.africa