By Epiphanus Obia
The Federal Government’s announcement on Tuesday, March 17, of launching a “Fly Now, Pay Later” scheme for domestic air travel has made headlines, and sparked the debate about whether the government is solving the right problem.
The news has shone light on a revolution that has been building for years and is now reshaping how millions of Nigerians access everything from their smartphones to their electricity, their education, and now their airline seats. Nigeria is in the middle of a Buy Now, Pay Later revolution. And most people have not noticed because it does not look like a revolution at all.
What is Buy Now, Pay Later?
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL for short) is a simple idea. You get the thing you need today. You pay for it in pieces, usually over a few weeks or months. There is typically little or no added interest for short repayment periods, and the whole process happens digitally, often in minutes, without the usual paperwork that a traditional bank would involve.
It is not a loan in the way most Nigerians think of loans, there are no collateral, guarantor sitting across a desk, or six-week timeline for approval. It is closer to a digital payment plan, built into the checkout process of whatever you are trying to buy.
The model became popular globally through companies like Klarna in Europe and Afterpay in Australia, mostly for online shopping, clothes, electronics, small luxuries. But what is happening in Nigeria is different. Here, BNPL is not being used primarily for luxuries. It is being used for necessities. And that changes everything about what the product means and who it is for.
How BNPL started in Nigeria
The most important early chapter of Nigeria’s BNPL story was not about flights or energy, it was about mobile phones.
A few years ago, fintechs like Carbon, Credpal, and others began offering device financing. The pitch was simple: that brand new Android you want costs ₦150,000 all at once, or you can pay ₦40,000 today and the rest in three installments. For a young professional whose entire work life, from banking, communication, social media management, to freelance income, runs through a smartphone, this was not a luxury purchase. It was a productivity investment, and BNPL made it possible.
Millions of Nigerians accessed their first modern, capable smartphone through some version of this model. The device unlocked earning power, and the earning power funded the repayments. It actually worked.
That early success created an appetite, among consumers who had experienced flexible credit and among entrepreneurs who saw an infrastructure ready to be applied elsewhere.
Where BNPL went next
From smartphones, the model quietly expanded into territory that says a great deal about what Nigerians actually struggle to afford.
Energy became an obvious next frontier. Companies like M-KOPA built their entire business model around a pay-as-you-go solar system, you pay a small deposit for a solar panel and battery kit, then top it up daily, weekly, or monthly through your phone, much like buying airtime. The moment you stop paying, the system locks. The moment you resume, it unlocks. No court orders, no debt collectors, just credit enforced through technology. For households in areas where the national grid is unreliable or nonexistent, this model delivered electricity in a way that a bank loan never could have.
Education came next. Several edtech companies and private secondary schools now allow parents to pay school fees in installments rather than in full at the start of term. When ₦800,000 in annual school fees would have been enough to pull a child out of school, spreading it across monthly payments keeps them in class.
Then, Healthcare. While the sector is still early in this journey, platforms exploring installment-based payment for hospital bills and elective procedures are gaining ground, particularly as the cost of private healthcare continues to climb.
CREDICORP itself has been methodically extending credit access sector by sector, solar systems, electric vehicles, goods manufactured in Nigeria, loans for young professionals and civil servants, a fund specifically for women entering the mobility sector. Fly Now, Pay Later is simply the most recent door on that same corridor.
What exactly did the government launch this week?
CREDICORP’s Fly Now, Pay Later scheme works like this: you visit visaro.ng, choose your domestic destination, pay a 30% deposit, and spread the remaining 70% across three monthly installments. The financing is delivered through MyVisaro, a Nigerian fintech credit platform, and Alert Microfinance Bank provides the lending infrastructure behind it.
It is not the only aviation financing product in Nigeria, it is actually entering a space where private players already exist. Fidelity Bank has offered a similar product for some time, financing up to 70% of a fare at a 2.92% monthly interest rate. FCMB does it through 247Travels. CredPal has it built into its app and covers both domestic and international routes. Kero Global Lendas offers repayment periods of up to six months for employed individuals.
What the government scheme adds is the weight of federal backing and, broader reach, for Nigerians who do not have existing relationships with those specific institutions.
The connection
Nigeria has a consumer credit problem that is decades old. The formal banking sector never successfully built products that worked for ordinary people at scale. Loan processes were slow, collateral requirements were steep, and the entire system was designed for a customer profile (steady income, bank history, physical address) that excluded most of the country.
BNPL, delivered through mobile platforms, does not fix those underlying structural problems. But it routes around them in ways that are genuinely changing people’s lives. It meets Nigerians where they are, on their phones, in informal employment, without credit histories, and builds something workable from there.
The risk, of course, that any credit product that is too easy to access is also easy to misuse. Borrowing to fund a flight when you cannot comfortably manage the repayments is the kind of decision that creates financial hardship down the line. The enthusiasm that comes with a new credit scheme needs to be matched by transparency from the providers, clear interest rates, honest repayment terms, and straightforward explanations of what happens when things go wrong.
For now, CREDICORP has opened the door to aviation credit. The private sector opened similar doors to devices, energy, and education long before the government arrived.
The problem that Nigeria still needs to figure out the solution to is not how to finance the cost of living, but how to reduce it. That is a harder issue, and one that a well-designed app alone cannot have.