Olatunde Success, CEO of SAW Technologies Limited, on what changes when you build software for Nigerian businesses: naira pricing, local payment rails, regulatory reality, and why imported SaaS keeps missing.
Most software a Nigerian business runs on was designed for someone else. It prices in dollars, assumes payment rails that do not exist here, and has never heard of withholding tax. It still gets bought, because there is nothing better, and the gap between the tool and the reality becomes somebody’s manual workaround. At SAW Technologies we build for that gap on purpose.
Pricing is a product decision
A subscription quoted in dollars is a bet your customer did not agree to make. Every time the naira moves, their software bill moves with it, and the finance team starts hunting for tools to cut. Naira pricing is not generosity; it is what makes a product survivable in a customer’s budget. It also forces discipline on us: our own cost base has to support the price we charge.
Local rails are not an integration detail
Bank transfers still dominate. A product that assumes card-first checkout is designing for the wrong default.
Virtual accounts, direct-debit mandates, and card issuing each have their own lifecycle, and each one shapes the product experience above it.
Reconciliation is a feature. When money moves through several providers, the customer expects one truthful balance, and that is engineering work nobody sees.
Regulation is a design input
NDPA 2023 changed what you can collect and how long you keep it. CBN rules shape KYC. Tax obligations shape invoicing. Foreign tools treat these as edge cases to configure; we treat them as defaults to build. Dbrij Finance calculates VAT, PAYE, WHT, and CIT because a Nigerian company needs those numbers, not because a settings page allows it.
The opportunity this creates
Every one of these gaps is a place where a local team can beat a global product without outspending it. We do not need to build a better video call than the giants. We need to build the operating system where the video call, the invoice with the right tax, and the escrow-backed project all live in one place, priced in a currency the customer earns in.
That is the thesis behind Dbrij, and it is the same thesis behind Cirva and Resikonet: build for the market as it actually is, and the software stops fighting the people using it.
