Walk into a supermarket in many countries and you will find a rack of gift cards near the till: cards for clothing stores, streaming services, restaurants and online shops, all sold in one place. The brands behind those cards don't run the rack themselves. A network of aggregators, resellers and processors sits in between, and that network is what makes gift cards an everyday purchase.
In Nigeria, that middle layer has largely been missing. Plenty of brands offer gift cards or vouchers, but most run them on their own: paper vouchers, codes kept in spreadsheets, cards that can only be bought and spent at the brand's own counter. The demand is there. What hasn't existed is the infrastructure that lets a brand's card be sold by someone else.
What a brand can't easily do alone
Running a gift card programme properly is harder than printing vouchers. A brand needs:
- Codes that can't be guessed or copied, checked every time they are used, with a reliable record of what is left on each one.
- A way to redeem them at every till and checkout, including part payments, without staff keeping codes in notebooks.
- Places to sell them beyond its own stores: supermarkets, agents, fintech apps and banks that already see the customers it wants to reach.
- Settlement and reporting that show what was sold, where it was spent and what is owed to whom.
Each of those is a project in itself. Together they explain why so many programmes stay small: a voucher that can only be bought at one counter is a voucher few people buy.
What AfroPin does
AfroPin is built as that missing layer. It is an aggregator that works business to business:
- Brands (the brands) run their gift card programmes on AfroPin. We build their products with them: the amounts, whether a card is used once or in part payments, how long it lasts, and the terms the customer sees.
- Resellers (retail chains, agent networks, apps and banks) sell those cards from a prepaid wallet and earn a commission on each one.
- AfroPin issues the codes, keeps the ledger, delivers each PIN to the customer and settles the money between everyone.
The result is that one brand's gift card can be sold in many places and accepted everywhere that brand trades, with every PIN on one record.
Why we onboard every business ourselves
There is no self-serve sign-up on AfroPin. Every brand and reseller applies, is verified, and is set up by our team. It is slower than letting anyone create an account, but a gift card network only works if everyone on it can be trusted: brands need to know who is selling their cards, and resellers need to know the cards they sell will be honoured.
It is hands-on work, business by business. We think it is the only way the channel gets built properly, and we are among the first in Nigeria to build it this way.
If you are a brand that wants your gift cards sold beyond your own counter, or a business that wants to sell them, apply from the button at the top of this page and our partnerships team will be in touch.
