**PaySwift’s 400% Fee Markup: How a Nigerian Fintech Bets on Desperation**

Fintech darling PaySwift didn’t just post record revenues last quarter—it achieved them by quietly hiking transaction fees on its “FlexiLoan” product to an effective annual rate of 148%. The Central Bank’s latest shadow audit, leaked yesterday, reveals that the average cost of a ₦10,000 short-term loan now carries a hidden ₦4,200 “processing charge,” buried on page seven of the digital contract. That’s a 420 basis point leap in nine months.

The math is brutal by design. PaySwift targets civil servants and low-income traders who lack access to traditional credit. Its algorithm denies refinancing options unless users borrow again—lurching them into a debt treadmill. I ran the numbers: a teacher borrowing ₦15,000 for a child’s school fees will repay ₦21,800 within 30 days or face a compounding penalty that doubles the principal in 90 days.

The company’s response parrots the tired fintech mantra of “financial inclusion.” But inclusion doesn’t demand a 72% default-driven profit margin. PaySwift’s two founders—both ex-Wall Street—sold $12 million in secondary shares weeks before the audit. Insider timing? The regulators call it coincidence.

What galls is the silence of the so-called impact investors who backed this operation with $80 million in “social impact” capital. They’re earning yield on misery.

This isn’t innovation. It’s loan-sharking with a slick app interface, dressed up in Silicon Valley jargon. The Central Bank must cap micro-lending fees now, before this engineered desperation claims more livelihoods.

This is Sarah Okafor for Global1.news, reporting from Lagos.