Nigerian open-finance startup Zeeh Africa has relaunched its Direct Debit feature as it deepens its push into payments infrastructure and targets one of the biggest challenges facing digital lenders: reliable loan repayment.
The move comes as unsecured-loan performance weakened in Q2 2025. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria's Credit Conditions Survey, lenders reported higher defaults, with a net balance of -1.5, amid rapid growth in digital-lending activity.
Zeeh's Direct Debit tool allows businesses to automatically debit customers on agreed dates with their consent, replacing manual reminders and failed transfers that have long strained lenders and subscription-based services. Founded in 2022, the company offers APIs for bank-data access, identity verification, credit analysis and now automated recovery.
Zeeh first launched Direct Debit in 2024 but shut it down to overhaul the product. A beta version rolled out in February onboarded 20 businesses; the relaunched system now powers 22 companies across lending, education finance and subscription services. The startup says it has processed more than five million API calls this year across its products.
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The firm plans to expand Direct Debit to new payment rails and offer the product outside Nigeria through UseZeeh, its unified API gateway.
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Key Takeaways
Zeeh's relaunch highlights how repayment reliability has become a pressure point in Nigeria's fast-expanding digital lending industry. While fintechs have made credit cheaper and easier to access, collections infrastructure has lagged, forcing lenders to rely on manual follow-ups and large recovery teams. As defaults rise, automated debit tools are becoming central to sustainable credit models. By combining verification, bank-data access, credit-risk insights and repayment automation, Zeeh is pitching an end-to-end stack rather than a single debit feature. The company argues that its mandate-based system complies with the FCCPC's 2025 lending rules, which emphasise transparency and borrower consent and prohibit aggressive collection practices. Competition, however, is intense. Established players like Flutterwave, Paystack, Moniepoint, Kora and Mono already power recurring payments across the market. Zeeh's differentiation hinges on deeper integration with lenders' underwriting pipelines and its broader open-banking capabilities. The next test will be scale--whether it can convert early traction into a meaningful share of Nigeria's high-volume repayment flows.
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