In the story of Nigeria’s digital banking revolution, product launches and funding rounds often take centre stage. Less visible, but equally decisive, are the engineers who quietly build the systems capable of handling scale, trust, and millions of daily financial interactions.
Among them is Ayoola Samagbeyi, the engineer whose work helped power the meteoric rise of Kuda, now widely regarded as one of Nigeria’s fastest-growing digital bank.
Ayoola’s journey at Kuda is as much a human story as it is a technical one. He joined the company at an early stage as a senior engineer, at a time when the idea of a fully digital Nigerian bank was still unproven.
Within 18 months, he rose to become Head of Engineering, overseeing the technical buildout of a platform that would go on to serve more than five million users and process millions of transactions every day.
From Code to Core Banking
When Ayoola began working on Kuda, the challenge was not just building an app, it was building a bank from scratch. There was no legacy infrastructure to lean on, no established blueprint for operating a mobile-first bank at scale in Nigeria’s complex regulatory and infrastructural environment.
He was part of the small engineering team responsible for building Kuda’s first mobile application, laying the foundations for what would later become a full-stack digital banking platform. Reflecting on those early days, Ayoola describes a mix of excitement and pressure.
“Launching Kuda’s first app felt surreal,” he recalls in a chat with TechEconomy recently. “We were building something that hadn’t really been done at scale in Nigeria before. Watching the app grow to 100,000 users within six months was both validating and humbling. It showed us that young Nigerians were hungry for a better banking experience, and that the responsibility on us as engineers was enormous.”
That early traction proved the concept. But it also raised the stakes. Systems that worked for a few thousand users now had to scale reliably, securely, and without interruption.
Scaling Under Pressure
As Kuda’s user base grew exponentially, so did the complexity of its engineering challenges. The bank needed infrastructure that could handle real-time transactions, ensure high availability, meet regulatory requirements, and deliver a seamless user experience, all at once.
Ayoola’s rapid progression from Senior Engineer to Head of Engineering was driven not only by technical competence but by his ability to think systemically. He helped design and scale the backend architecture that supports Kuda’s core banking operations, ensuring the platform could grow without compromising speed or reliability.
Today, Kuda processes millions of transactions daily, a testament to the robustness of the systems built under his leadership. Yet, for Ayoola, the pressure of building a bank went beyond uptime metrics and performance dashboards.
“You’re not just shipping features,” he explains. “You’re building trust. When people use a digital bank, they’re trusting invisible systems with their livelihoods. That pressure forces you to be deliberate, disciplined, and forward-thinking in every engineering decision.”
Engineering Nigeria’s Digital Banking Revolution
Ayoola’s work sits within a broader shift transforming Nigeria’s financial sector. Digital banks like Kuda have redefined access to financial services, particularly for young Nigerians who were underserved or frustrated by traditional banking models.
From his vantage point as an engineer at the heart of this transformation, Ayoola sees Nigeria’s digital banking revolution as both inevitable and unfinished.
“Nigeria’s digital banking revolution is still in its early chapters,” he says. “What we’re seeing now is the result of years of infrastructure investment and engineering experimentation. But the real opportunity lies in continuing to lower barriers, making banking simpler, cheaper, and more accessible for everyday people.”
By building scalable, cloud-native systems and prioritising mobile-first experiences, Ayoola and his team helped Kuda remove many of the friction points that had long defined banking in Nigeria. Features like instant account opening, zero-maintenance fees, and real-time notifications were made possible by infrastructure designed to scale from day one.
Beyond Titles and Metrics
Despite his achievements, Ayoola remains understated about his role. Colleagues describe him as deeply technical, intensely focused, and quietly ambitious, someone more interested in solving problems than collecting accolades.
His rise within Kuda reflects a broader shift in how leadership is emerging within Africa’s tech ecosystem. Increasingly, engineers who understand both the technical and human dimensions of scale are taking on leadership roles, shaping products that impact millions.
For young engineers watching his journey, Ayoola’s story offers a powerful lesson: that deep technical work, done consistently and thoughtfully, can translate into industry-wide impact.
Building for the Next Million Users
As Nigeria’s digital economy continues to expand, the demands on digital banks will only intensify. More users, more transactions, and more complex use cases will require even stronger infrastructure and more resilient systems.
Ayoola sees this as both a challenge and an opportunity.
“The goal is not just growth,” he notes, “but sustainable growth, building systems that can serve the next million users as reliably as the first.”
Ayoola Samagbeyi’s story is a reminder that behind every successful digital platform lies an engineer, or a team of engineers, who make scale possible. From coding Kuda’s first mobile app to leading the engineering organisation that supports millions of daily transactions, his career reflects the quiet power of technical excellence.
In helping to build one of Nigeria’s most influential digital banks, Ayoola has also helped democratise access to financial services for a new generation.
And as Nigeria’s digital banking story continues to unfold, the systems he helped design will remain a foundational part of that transformation.
