Building the Nigeria’s Credit Landscape Report 2025 required months of data collection, analysis, and synthesis across CBN statistics, FHAN sector data, FMDQ market data, World Bank benchmarks, and Credit Direct's own analysis of over 300,000 borrowers.
What we did not expect was how often the data pushed back on what we assumed we already knew.
Some findings confirmed existing intuitions. Many sharpened them. A few challenged them outright. These are the four that stayed with us, and what we believe they mean for anyone operating in or around this market.
1. Women Borrow Less, But Repay Better
Men take 74% of all loans, women borrow just 24%.
Women seem to rely on loans less than men, and they manage their loans better.
Despite taking only 26% of total loans disbursed, women consistently outperform men on repayment. The female delinquency rate in our data is 7.8%, compared to 10.9% for men. The pattern holds even among married borrowers: married men default at rates 2.63% higher than those of married women, despite married borrowers as a group being more creditworthy than single borrowers.
How much exactly do Nigerian women borrow on average? You can find that in the report.
2. Nigerians Are Borrowing for Living Essentials
The top three reasons Nigerians take loans are rent, medical bills, and school fees.
This is not an optimistic headline. But it is one of the most honest things the data says about where Nigeria's credit market actually is.
90% of borrowers in our dataset earn less than ₦200,000 per month. For this majority, credit is not a wealth-building tool; it is a bridge between what life costs and what a salary provides. The structural costs of ordinary Nigerian life: shelter, healthcare, and education, frequently exceed what the monthly income can cover. Loans fill that gap.
This is why Credit Direct is always trying to make credit more accessible; many Nigerians need it to survive.
Get A Loan of Up to N7.5M on the Credit Direct App.
3. Nigeria Is Financially Included but Credit-Excluded
64% of Nigerian adults are financially included. Only 6% borrow from formal sources.
Many Nigerians have accounts. They have access to digital payments. What most of them do not have is formal credit. Nigeria's credit-to-GDP ratio is 13.1%, compared with Kenya's 31.8% and South Africa's 57.6%.
The infrastructure exists. The credit system is catching up; Credit Direct is building it. By making it easier to access credit without the need for collateral, improving automation for risk-decisioning, we see a future where more Nigerians are willing participants in the credit system.
4. BNPL Is Quietly Becoming a Business Tool
45% of BNPL transactions in 2025 came from self-employed individuals, outpacing salaried workers at 29%.
Buy Now Pay Later launched in Nigeria as a consumer retail product. The 2025 data suggests it has quietly become something more.
Business owners using BNPL carry higher average ticket sizes — ₦276,213 versus ₦230,900 for salary earners. They are not buying phones for personal use. They are acquiring equipment, inventory, and tools without depleting working capital, and without meeting the documentation requirements that traditional business lending demands. For a segment that commercial banks and most finance companies have historically underserved, BNPL is filling a working-capital gap it wasn't designed to fill.
It is making economic participation accessible, one instalment at a time.
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What These Findings Mean
Each of these findings points to the same underlying reality: Nigeria's credit market is large, consequential, and structurally constrained in ways that are costly for borrowers, lenders, and the broader economy.
Essential costs are driving loan growth, not investment appetite. Credit infrastructure has not kept pace with progress in financial inclusion. Loan sizes are rising because costs are rising, and new credit products are finding uses their designers may not have fully anticipated.
None of this is cause for despair. All of it is cause for serious, data-led engagement with how Nigeria's credit market is built, who it serves, and what it could become.
The full data behind each of these findings, along with additional analysis, benchmarks, and forward projections, is available in the Nigerian Credit Landscape Report 2025.
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