About NorthPole
Financial infrastructure, built where it is needed.
NorthPole exists so that a business in Lagos can take a payment, hold two currencies and pay a supplier without stitching together four services and hoping they agree.
What we are
Two products, one platform.
NorthPole is financial and commerce infrastructure for modern African businesses. In V1 that means two products that share one account and one balance: NorthPole Pay for accepting payments and building financial features, NorthPole Money for holding, moving and exchanging money.
They are not two products that happen to share a login. A Pay integration settles into the same balance a Money account can hold, move, and spend from. That is the whole design.
We start in Nigeria because that is the market we understand first-hand, and because the problems here — transfer-heavy payments, multi-currency needs, verification requirements — are the problems worth solving properly.
How we work
What we hold ourselves to.
These are the commitments the product is built on — the ones that decide arguments when there is a trade-off to make.
- 01
Complexity belongs to us
Gateways, switches, settlement cycles and compliance are our problem. What reaches the customer should be a balance, a status and a receipt.
- 02
Built for local reality
Bank transfer is a first-class payment method here, not a fallback. Naira is a first-class currency. We design for how money actually moves.
- 03
Predictable beats clever
Amounts in minor units. Idempotent writes. One object shape per resource. An integration you write once should keep working.
- 04
Say what is true
We publish what we can stand behind. No invented traction, no rate cards we would have to walk back, no claims about customers we have not earned.
- 05
One account, three products
Money arriving through POS is the same balance Pay settles into and Money spends from. Separate products would mean separate reconciliations.
- 06
Money deserves care
People's income moves through this. That sets the bar for how carefully we ship, how clearly we report failure, and how we treat a bug.
Live
Nigeria
Designed for
West Africa
The ambition
Africa
Where this goes
Built in Africa. Built for what comes next.
NorthPole is live in Nigeria and designed with the ambition to become financial infrastructure for modern businesses across Africa. Multi-currency accounting and country-aware compliance are in the data model from day one — not retrofitted later.
We are deliberate about the difference between what is live and what is intended. Nigeria is live. The rest is the ambition, and we will say so until it is not.
NorthPole is a technology company, not a bank.
Regulated financial services — including holding deposits and issuing cards — are provided by licensed partners, and customer funds sit with those partners rather than with NorthPole. Our compliance and security pages set out how that works.
Build on NorthPole.
Create an account, work in test mode as long as you need, and go live when you are ready.