Moniepoint, one of Nigeria's largest payment companies, is testing whether its point-of-sale (PoS) terminals can do more than move money. The fintech is using its network of more than one million terminals to distribute shares in Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals' ₦2.15 trillion ($1.62 billion) initial public offering (IPO), turning a device built for cash collection into a potential investment outlet.

The experiment speaks to the scale of Nigeria's PoS infrastructure. The country has 5.9 million active PoS terminals, and since the 2023 cash crisis they have become instrumental in how Nigerians get cash, make payments, and keep their businesses running. Moniepoint wants to use its network, which reaches all 774 local government areas, to bring Dangote shares to the last mile. Nigerians can walk into an agent location, provide their Bank Verification Number (BVN) if they do not have a Moniepoint account, and buy shares without using an investment app or even speaking to a broker.

It is Nigeria's biggest IPO, targeting 10 million retail investors, and the offering has employed fintechs and other innovative channels to reach them. On Wednesday, the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX Group) said it expanded access to its NGX Invest platform by launching a WhatsApp subscription channel, giving potential investors another way to participate in public offers.

But the PoS experiment brings the IPO to Nigeria's second-largest payment channel. PoS terminals were used 15.66 billion times in 2025, behind only internet payments at 21.11 billion, according to data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Nigerians are almost twice as likely to use a PoS terminal as they are to use an app.

That reach presents an opportunity for operators such as Moniepoint, which sees the IPO as a proof of concept for what its PoS network could become: a physical distribution layer for financial products that have traditionally lived inside banks, brokerages, and investment apps.

"The financial inclusion game that we are playing is not just to solve payments alone," Daniel Ojinaka, Product Lead, Consolidated DirectDebit at TeamApt, a subsidiary of Moniepoint Inc., told TechCabal on a recent call. "We want to solve any other aspect of the financial space for everyone and to include everyone. We have been working on something, and the opportunity presented itself."

An IPO suited to the experiment

Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals is offering 4.1 billion shares at ₦525 ($0.39) each, targeting ₦2.15 trillion ($1.62 billion) if fully subscribed. The offer opened on September 14 and is scheduled to close on October 13, 2026, with a minimum subscription of 10 shares, or ₦5,250 ($3.95).

Nigeria currently has about 2.7 million retail investors. If successful, the IPO will add at least 7.3 million first-time investors to the market. To achieve that, the offering needs to reach as many people as possible, which is where PoS terminals become particularly useful.

PoS terminals were used 2.92 billion times in the first three months of 2026, according to the CBN. Those 90 days amount to roughly 32.4 million transactions per day, or 1.4 million per hour. If half of those transactions are unique, the terminals interact with at least 16.2 million people daily. If one in every 10 of those people buys the IPO, that translates to 1.62 million potential investors.

The calculation is illustrative rather than predictive. A transaction is not necessarily a unique person, and the reach of Moniepoint's network will differ from the national total. But it shows why the physical network is attractive to an IPO trying to bring millions of people into the capital market. The scenario applies assumptions for the share of PoS transactions representing unique people and the share of those people who subscribe, based on figures from the CBN, NIBSS, and TechCabal reporting: 2.92 billion PoS transactions in the first quarter of 2026, 2.7 million current retail investors, an estimated population of 237 million, and one PoS terminal per 28 people.

Moniepoint says the channel is already gaining traction. "The rate at which POS is growing since Wednesday versus mobile, the POS is growing at a faster rate. Right, if we do everything right, everything we are planning to do right, we hope the POS will surpass the mobile at a faster rate," Ojinaka said.

The other advantage is physical reach. With an estimated population of 237 million, Nigeria has about one PoS terminal for every 28 people. If even one in every 28 Nigerians who interacts with a PoS terminal became a stock investor, the network could theoretically expose more than 8 million people to the capital market — nearly three times the country's current 2.7 million retail investors.

A ₦100,000 ceiling, and the question of fees

Subscribing to an IPO through a PoS terminal is currently capped at ₦100,000 ($75.27) per person, which means the terminal is deliberately being designed for small-ticket investment.

"A lot of people with a lot of money already are sitting down in their houses, and they have apps," Ojinaka said. "The people we are talking to probably have just earned ₦50,000 ($37.64) in cash that day. And they are like, okay, let me use it to buy this."

The cap is also partly a safety measure. Because the PoS channel can involve cash, Moniepoint said it does not want the investment channel to become an easy route for moving or laundering large amounts of money. "We do not want that to be a channel where people are not using it to clean up their cash," he said. Customers who want to invest more can use the company's other channels.

Fintechs, including Moniepoint, are currently charging customers ₦0 for processing Dangote's IPO. Dangote, however, has earmarked an estimated ₦41.49 billion ($31.23 million) for offer expenses, covering costs for issuing houses and other professional parties involved in the offer — and fintechs will get a slice.

Agents, though, are not doing this for free. They still charge their usual commissions on transactions. In a test transaction, a TechCabal reporter subscribed to 10 units of the shares through a PoS terminal and was charged ₦100 ($0.075) on top of the ₦5,250 ($3.95) transaction itself, with Moniepoint adding no additional fees. For agents, however, this is another financial transaction, and there are few incentives to offer it for free. An extra ₦100 ($0.075) or ₦200 ($0.15) across multiple transactions per day can add up to a meaningful source of revenue over a month. Agents operate businesses.

Moniepoint said it is intensifying agent awareness efforts and will roll out incentives to ensure customers can buy shares without additional fees on certain days. While the fintech has rolled out its investment product for free, the last-mile distribution layer still has its own economics.

The terminal was already more than cash

PoS machines started out doing a couple of things well: processing payments for businesses and becoming a cash source for the average person. But Moniepoint said it had spent years testing ways to turn its terminals into an offline access point for financial and non-financial services.

"We have our lending product as well that we run for personnel and even through the merchants' network, and we have been experimenting with tax payments through what we call Monify offline products for a while. So, there is a culture. We have known that for a while, and been building on that use case and expanding it," Ojinaka said.

The company said people had been using Monify offline to pay directly into their Cowrywise accounts at agents' locations, for instance, showing that its terminals can be more than just payment or cash machines. The terminals were already configured for direct debit.

"We decided to see how we can make subscription payments or recurring payments a thing. How do we open it up to get activations done in an offline space?" Ojinaka said. "When Direct Debit presented itself, of course, Direct Debit is a one-time purchase. We have also had similar patterns, like your bill payments. Today, you can go to an agent location and pay for your DSTV. All you need to do is enter your IUC number, validate it, and make your payment. So it is not different from the same experience."

For the Dangote IPO, the company redesigned this use case with an extra layer of complexity. "The technology has always been there," he said.

Buying shares through an app is relatively straightforward: open an investment account, complete know-your-customer (KYC) verification, fund the account, and place an order. A PoS transaction has to compress much of that experience into a few minutes on a device with a small screen and a short timeout, usually operated by someone who is not a financial adviser.

For the Dangote IPO, Moniepoint said it had tried to solve several problems at once. A customer who is not already a Moniepoint user still needs to be identified. Their BVN has to be captured and matched. Their investment details must be linked to the appropriate securities account, and the transaction must go through the relevant capital-market infrastructure. Customers can top up their shares until they reach the ₦100,000 ($75.27) PoS limit, and the service is not limited to agents — it can also be accessed on merchant terminals.

Moniepoint is not the stockbroker simply because a customer can buy shares at its terminal; the company is a distribution or receiving channel. It said Vetiva, a Pan-African financial services firm, is the sponsor broker for the arrangement, and that Moniepoint has the relevant agreements with the broker and the NGX, including its own regulator. The company is also integrated with Chapel Hill, a Nigerian investment banking, securities trading, and investment management firm, and Renaissance Capital, an Africa-focused investment banking and markets franchise.

"There were conversations with the Dangote team in February. We have a verified broker who partners with us. Being a regulated body, we had to get some consent from our regulators, also to notify them of what we were about to do," Ojinaka said.

The investment option is currently limited to Dangote's IPO, but the company said it has helped it build capacity. "Left to us at Moniepoint, we want to be the ones to democratise access to the capital markets. If it is possible that we can possibly sync to the NGX and users can just go to our PoS, select the stock they want to top up, and do it, that is the goal for us. But obviously that is going to take steps, a lot of steps, and it will take some time before that happens," Ojinaka said.

Dangote's IPO gives PoS terminals a new product, a large addressable audience, and a test of whether people who already trust an agent with their cash will also trust that same physical interface with an investment. If it works, the PoS terminal stops being merely a place where money moves and becomes a place where financial ownership can begin.

The agent is the next interface

Nigeria has spent years building a human layer around its digital financial infrastructure. People who may never visit a bank branch know where to find the nearest agent. The International Monetary Fund estimates there are 1,600 PoS operators per square kilometre in Nigeria.

But this rapid growth has also raised concerns about fraud and compliance, with agents sometimes unknowingly serving as entry points for illicit activity. The CBN is working to limit PoS terminals to an operating radius. Investments involve even more sensitive information, including the BVN. When a TechCabal reporter tried the service, the terminal displayed the reporter's full BVN during identity verification, while blurring part of the name and mobile number.

The same physical proximity that makes PoS terminals useful for financial inclusion can also create new questions around privacy, fraud, agent conduct, and investor protection.

The Dangote IPO currently has scale to power Moniepoint's "PoS can be more" experiment. What happens after the IPO will paint a clearer picture of whether Nigerians can trust the agent who helped them withdraw ₦10,000 ($7.53) yesterday to become the person who helps them buy or top up their shares tomorrow.

This article is based on reporting originally published by TechCabal: What happens when a PoS terminal becomes an investment outlet?