Every time a Nigerian sends money to someone, they hand over a fragment of their financial identity. An account number here. A phone number there. A name tied to a transfer trail. Over time, those fragments accumulate into something a fraudster can use. Chika Okere, founder of Nigerian fintech Flex, believes this is the real engine of financial fraud in Nigeria, and he has built a product to address it.

Flex has introduced what it calls paytags, unique identifiers that allow users to send and receive money without ever revealing their actual account numbers. Instead of sharing sensitive banking details with every transaction, users share a paytag, a short, custom handle tied to their account but shielding the underlying financial information from the recipient.



The Fraud Problem It Is Targeting

According to Okere, fraud in Nigeria rarely begins with a single dramatic breach. It starts with accumulation. An account number shared for a payment. A BVN exposed in a data leak. A phone number attached to a transfer. A name linked to a salary receipt. None of those fragments is dangerous on its own. But over time, bad actors collect them, combine them, and build enough of a picture to impersonate someone, manipulate a bank system, or execute a social engineering attack.

"What hackers target is information that makes sense," Okere said. "Nobody has all your information at once. They collect it gradually."

Paytags are designed to break that chain by removing the most reusable piece of information from every transaction: the account number itself.

Still Early But Ambitious

The concept is not entirely new globally. Cash App and Zelle have long used payment usernames and tags in the United States. But in Nigeria, where fraud cases continue rising and financial identity theft is an increasingly visible problem, the local application carries more urgency.

Flex confirmed it deliberately slowed user growth while finalising licensing partnerships tied to microfinance banking, mobile money operations, and payment service solutions. Its stated target is 2.5 million users by the end of 2027, an ambitious number for a platform still in its early stages. Its partnerships are still forming, its infrastructure still evolving, and many of its claims remain untested at national scale. But the core insight behind paytags, that privacy by design is a more durable defence than reactive fraud detection, is one that Nigeria's financial ecosystem may find increasingly difficult to ignore.