Nigerian online therapy platform Mytherapist.ng has entered a partnership with healthcare financing company MyItura to let users pay for therapy in instalments rather than upfront. The offering is the centrepiece of a relaunch the company is calling Mytherapist.ng 2.0, which also introduces in-person sessions at Café One, a co-working network with more than 30 locations across Nigeria.

The affordability push comes against a stark backdrop: approximately 20% of Nigerians experience a mental health condition, yet fewer than 10% receive minimally adequate care. In 2020, out-of-pocket spending accounted for 74.7% of the country's health expenditure, according to the World Health Organisation. For people who require repeated sessions, the cost becomes a recurring expense rather than a one-off payment. Instalment financing speaks to that timing problem directly: the underlying cost of care is unchanged, but the moment a patient has to pay for it is spread out.

Oluwaseun-Raphael Afolayan, Mytherapist.ng's co-founder and chief executive officer, told TechCabal that two years of user feedback and data shaped the relaunch.

"We've gotten feedback over the past two years. We've seen data. We've seen what people want, and along the way we've met quite a lot of these demands, but we've seen that we can do much more, which is why we are doing Mytherapist.ng 2.0," Afolayan said. "What we've always believed in is that nobody should be denied help just because they cannot afford to pay for it at that moment."

Afolayan and Dedoyin Ajayi founded the company in 2021 after Afolayan struggled with his own mental health and found therapy difficult to access.

"Before the advent of platforms like Mytherapist.ng, if you needed to talk to a therapist and you had the capacity, you would go to platforms like BetterHelp, but you quickly come to find out that it's really difficult opening up or getting the best out of therapy when your therapist doesn't understand the socio-cultural challenges that you are having in this part of the world," he said.

Mytherapist.ng began informally as a spreadsheet of therapists Ajayi could personally vouch for. In December 2021, the founders decided to formalise the initiative into a company.

The current version of the platform lets users sign up, browse therapists by speciality and availability, and book sessions. An AI-powered matching tool helps users find a therapist, or they can search manually for professionals who work with conditions and experiences including depression, anxiety, grief, panic attacks and burnout. The new partnerships with MyItura and Café One extend that model two further dimensions of the service: how users pay, and where they receive care.

Book now, pay later

MyItura will provide therapy financing through its Mediloan product, which launched in December 2025. Users select the instalment option when booking a session and spread the cost over time.

"Finance is a really big problem for a lot of Nigerians, especially when it comes to their wellbeing," Afolayan said. "It's a really big solution to this problem where our users can now book and not have to pay at that spot if they don't have the financial capacity to be able to do that."

MyItura told TechCabal that it evaluates each borrower's identity, repayment capacity, existing financial obligations, available financial and transaction information, and repayment behaviour where available, before deciding eligibility, loan amount and repayment terms.

"The information used depends on the customer's profile and is processed with consent," the company said in a statement. "Automated scoring supports the decision, with manual review for exceptions or unclear cases."

Once a loan is approved, MyItura pays the therapist through Mytherapist.ng, and the user repays MyItura in instalments. The financing facility is typically repaid monthly over about three months, though eligible users can receive terms of up to six months depending on the amount and their affordability assessment.

MyItura said its current non-performing loan rate stands at roughly 0.5%, although the portfolio is still young and no defaults have yet been written off. When payments are missed, the company sends reminders and automated notifications, retries authorised payment methods where permitted, and follows up through its collections team. Continued delays trigger more structured recovery steps, which can include reporting to an authorised credit bureau and lawful third parties.

"Accounts that pass the applicable delinquency threshold are classified as non-performing and provided for," MyItura stated. "A balance is written off only after the approved recovery process and accounting criteria are met. Throughout the process, MyItura prohibits threats, public shaming, improper contact with third parties, and interference with clinical care."

How that non-performing rate holds up as Mediloan's loan book moves past its early months will be one of the clearer signals of whether pay-later financing for therapy can work at scale.

Online booking, in-person sessions

Mytherapist.ng 2.0 also takes the platform's online sessions offline. Through a partnership with Café One, users in Lagos will be able to book a therapist online and meet them in person at selected Café One locations. Afolayan said the sessions will take place in private meeting rooms within the co-working spaces.

"We've chosen Café One specifically because we've seen that it meets a lot of our requirements for how serene and conducive we want these therapy rooms to be," he said. "They've done a really fantastic job of making sure that their spaces and hubs are very quiet and conducive because therapy itself has to be held in a very quiet and conducive environment without noise and other distractions."

The arrangement is not exclusive to Café One. Mytherapist.ng is also launching physical therapy through a clinic in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, and plans to add at least seven more locations in Lagos and about two in Abuja within two months, keeping its hubs close to both users and therapists. Completed as described, that rollout would put in-person therapy at roughly ten locations across the two cities within two months.

Alongside the physical rollout, the company is introducing subscriptions and group therapy. The subscription feature targets users who want to commit to regular sessions with the same therapist: subscribers lock in a recurring time slot at a discounted per-session rate. Group therapy, Afolayan said, will give people a space to share experiences with others going through similar situations without feeling alone.

The economics of therapy

Mytherapist.ng operates as a marketplace connecting users with vetted therapists, and it does not set a single standard price. Therapists set their own rates, producing a range of price points depending on the provider and the type of care. A session can cost about ₦4,000 ($3) at the lower end, and as much as ₦80,000 ($60) to ₦100,000 ($75) with some therapists, according to Afolayan.

The company says its network includes more than 100 verified therapists, and it has completed more than 5,200 therapy sessions since its inception. The new in-person sessions will follow the same pricing principle, with one addition: users pay an extra location fee for appointments held at partner spaces, which Mytherapist.ng says will be shown separately from the therapist's charge.

Mytherapist.ng competes in a market where other mental-health clinics and platforms are working to make professional care easier to find and access. In Nigeria, Blueroom Care offers online therapy, while global platforms such as BetterHelp and Talkspace have built businesses around connecting users with mental-health professionals online. Where those rivals focus on connecting users and therapists, the 2.0 push extends Mytherapist.ng into two adjacent pieces of the journey — payment and physical space.

Afolayan said Mytherapist.ng aims to build a care system rather than simply a marketplace for finding a therapist, and the 2.0 additions — financing, physical locations, subscriptions and group therapy — map onto that framing.

"We've always believed that therapy has to be both active and passive," he said. "Active in the sense that when you book, you book for one hour and in that one hour it is just you and your therapist. But the care has to continue beyond that one hour of therapy. That is why we give you access to various tools even when you're not actively in therapy."

This article was first published by TechCabal.