Introdution
Digital businesses in Nigeria are growing faster than ever. From e-commerce platforms to lending apps to SaaS products, the volume of customer payments being processed daily has never been higher.
But while payment volumes have grown, one thing has stayed frustratingly the same: how long it takes to actually receive those payments.
The most common solution available today gives businesses a T+1 settlement window, meaning money paid today arrives in your account tomorrow. For high-growth businesses that depend on real-time cash flow, this gap is a real operational problem.
The Problem
When a customer completes a payment, they expect the transaction to be done. But on the business side, the journey is just beginning.
Traditional payment collection routes funds through banking infrastructure that processes transactions in batches. Payments made in the afternoon may not be processed until the following morning. Weekend payments can sit until Monday.
Beyond timing, there is a visibility problem. Most businesses collect all customer payments into a single shared account. When 300 customers pay on the same day, your finance team receives 300 transactions with no automatic way to know who paid what.
The result: a manual matching process that consumes hours of staff time, introduces errors, and slows down every operation that depends on confirmed payment.
Our Solution
Monirates solves both problems with its One-Time Virtual Account (OTVA) feature.
A One-Time Virtual Account is a unique, temporary account number generated specifically for a single customer or transaction. Instead of paying into a shared company account, each customer gets their own account number linked directly to their payment.
When they pay, the system knows instantly who made the payment and what it was for. Settlement happens immediately, not the next business day.
The charge is 0.5% per transaction, with a minimum of N10 and a maximum of N1,000, keeping it affordable even for large transaction values.
How it Works
Here is how it works from start to finish:
- Your system calls the Monirates API to generate a unique virtual account for a customer or order
- The customer receives their unique account number and makes their bank transfer
- Payment arrives and is automatically matched to the correct customer record
- Your business is settled instantly, with no manual intervention required
- A real-time webhook notification is sent to your system, triggering any downstream workflows such as order fulfilment, loan disbursement, or receipt generation
The entire process is automated. No batch processing. No waiting until tomorrow. No spreadsheet matching.
Use Cases
One-Time Virtual Accounts are the right solution for:
- E-commerce platforms that need to confirm payment before releasing an order
- Lending platforms tracking customer repayments against specific loan accounts
- Schools collecting term fees from hundreds or thousands of students
- Logistics companies that release deliveries only on confirmed payment
- Marketplaces managing payments across multiple buyers and vendors
- Any business currently spending time matching transactions to customers manually
If your operations depend on confirmed payment before taking the next step, this feature removes the waiting entirely.
