Africa's neobanks,
by licence class.

The single most common misread on Nigerian neobank comparison pages is the assumption that the NDIC ₦5,000,000 ceiling applies universally to every CBN- licensed digital surface. It does not. The ₦5,000,000 figure is the Deposit Money Bank ceiling, statutorily reserved for full commercial banks chartered under BOFIA 2020. The Microfinance Bank ceiling — applicable to Kuda Microfinance Bank Ltd, Carbon, and OPay's OBank subsidiary — is ₦2,000,000 per depositor per institution. Both numbers were raised in the 2024 NDIC schedule (DMB from ₦500,000 to ₦5,000,000; MFB from ₦200,000 to ₦2,000,000) and the 2.5× gap between them is a deliberate regulatory feature reflecting the narrower deposit-taking perimeter and lower capital requirement of an MFB licence.

In our African cohort, only one entry sits in the DMB class: ALAT by Wema, which is Wema Bank PLC's digital surface — Wema is one of Nigeria's oldest commercial banks (founded 1945) and operates a full CBN Deposit Money Bank licence under BOFIA 2020, so an ALAT deposit sits inside the DMB-class NDIC envelope at ₦5,000,000, the same ceiling as a deposit at GTBank or Zenith. Every other Nigerian digital surface in the cohort — Kuda, Carbon, OPay's OBank — is MFB-class at ₦2,000,000. OPay's main wallet is an MMO licence with no NDIC cover at all; balances sit in segregated trust accounts at custodian commercial banks (segregation protects funds from the failure of OPay itself but is not deposit insurance and recovery depends on the trust-account arrangement, not on a state-backed compensation scheme). Sparkle and peer Payment Service Banks sit on the narrowest licence class with limited NDIC eligibility — verify the current operating perimeter on cbn.gov.ng before funding.

The licence-class filter is load-bearing. A naira-denominated deposit at ALAT is statutorily insured up to ₦5,000,000. The same naira deposit at Kuda or Carbon is statutorily insured up to ₦2,000,000 — a materially lower envelope despite the surface-level similarity of the two app experiences. Depositors comparing Nigerian digital banks on yield, card design, or app-experience grounds should overlay the licence-class filter first: the protection ceiling is a statutory property of the licence, not a marketing variable the operator can set. Read the Is Kuda safe?, Is OPay safe?, Is Carbon safe?, and Is ALAT by Wema safe? safety pages for the full licence-by-licence breakdown.

M-Pesa is operated by Safaricom under a Central Bank of Kenya Payment Service Provider licence. As of 2024, M-Pesa processes more retail payment transactions in Kenya than the rest of the formal banking sector combined, and it is the de facto retail-money rail across most income bands. But it is not a bank. M-Pesa balances are held in segregated trust accounts at custodian commercial banks; segregation protects funds from a failure of Safaricom's payments arm, but it is not deposit insurance, and KDIC cover does not apply to wallet balances. The same pattern applies to MTN Mobile Money across Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Uganda, and other markets, to Vodafone Cash in Egypt, and to OPay's main wallet in Nigeria, which holds a CBN Mobile Money Operator licence rather than a banking charter.

The implication for depositors is structural rather than circumstantial. A Kenyan retail user who keeps balances on M-Pesa is choosing a payment-rail product, not a deposit-protected bank account. A balance moved from M-Pesa to a CBK-licensed commercial bank crosses a regulatory perimeter into the KDIC envelope at the KES 500,000 ceiling. The same flow applies between OPay's MMO wallet and OPay's separately licensed OBank Microfinance Bank (NDIC ₦2,000,000), between MTN MoMo and a BoG-licensed universal bank (GDPC GHS 6,250), and between Vodafone Cash and a CBE-licensed commercial bank (EDIC tier-based). The rail choice is also a regulatory choice. Cross-border cases are messier: Chipper Cash runs on a stack of EMI / payment-services licences across multiple African jurisdictions and is the closest surface to a pan-African digital wallet, but it is an EMI rather than a chartered bank — balances are safeguarded under local e-money frameworks rather than deposit-insured. See Is Chipper Cash safe? for the licence-by-licence breakdown.

CODI is the youngest of the African schemes. The South African Corporation for Deposit Insurance launched on 1 April 2024 — pre-CODI, South African depositors had no formal statutory deposit-insurance scheme, and protection in a SARB-resolution scenario depended on case-by-case central-bank action. The post-1-April-2024 framework introduces a ZAR 100,000 ceiling per depositor per CODI-member institution, structured against three SARB licence classes: full Commercial Banks (the Big Four plus African Bank, Capitec, Discovery Bank, Investec, TymeBank), Mutual Banks (Bank Zero, GBS Mutual, Finbond), and Cooperative Financial Institutions. Bank Zero sits in the SARB Mutual Bank class and is a CODI member; an eligible Bank Zero deposit sits inside the CODI envelope at the ZAR 100,000 ceiling. The recency of CODI matters because depositor expectations — particularly from observers used to the longer-running FDIC and FSCS frameworks — do not always travel cleanly. See Is Bank Zero safe? for the SARB-licence-class breakdown.

Ghana's GDPC is the second-newest scheme, operationalised in 2019 following the 2017–18 Bank of Ghana banking-sector cleanup that consolidated the universal-bank licensee list and revoked operating licences from a number of distressed institutions. The GDPC ceiling is GHS 6,250 per depositor per institution — lower in nominal terms than the NDIC, CODI, KDIC, or EDIC numbers, and structured around three BoG licence classes: Universal Banks (the dominant commercial-bank licence under the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act), Savings & Loans companies, and DEMIs (Dedicated Electronic Money Issuers, the regulatory class that covers MTN Mobile Money's Ghana subsidiary). DEMI wallet balances sit outside the GDPC envelope on the same trust-account safeguarding logic as the Kenyan and Nigerian mobile-money cases. The other three African schemes — NDIC (Nigeria, since 1989), KDIC (Kenya, modernised 2012), and EDIC (Egypt) — are older and have been through more cycles of inflation and ceiling adjustment, but the principle is the same across all five: licence class on the receiving entity decides whether cover applies, and the headline number is calibrated to the domestic median balance rather than to a USD-equivalent figure.

Every African deposit-insurance ceiling on this page is a nominal local-currency figure, and every African currency in the cohort has depreciated materially against the US dollar over the past 24 months. NDIC ₦5,000,000 is roughly USD 3,300 at a USD/NGN rate near 1,500 following the 2023–2024 CBN exchange-rate reforms; CODI ZAR 100,000 is roughly USD 5,400; KDIC KES 500,000 is roughly USD 3,900; GDPC GHS 6,250 is roughly USD 530; EDIC ceilings translate similarly. All five are substantially smaller than FDIC ($250,000), FSCS (£85,000), or the EU DGS harmonised ceiling (€100,000). The protection is statutory and real, but the ceilings are calibrated for the domestic median balance, not for high-net- worth or USD-equivalent use cases.

The Egyptian pound float, the Ghanaian cedi devaluation cycle, and the naira reform package all illustrate the same dynamic: nominal ceilings erode in real terms during inflation episodes faster than the regulator's cycle for raising them. NDIC raised the DMB ceiling from ₦500,000 to ₦5,000,000 in 2024, but the real-USD value of the new headline is still below the ₦500,000 ceiling expressed in 2010 USD. Depositors with balances above the per-licence ceiling should split funds across multiple member institutions of the same licence class to layer cover, and depositors with USD-equivalent inflation-hedge needs should consider holding part of the balance outside the domestic envelope — a chartered USD account in a developed-market jurisdiction, a regulated multi-currency EMI, or a USD-denominated treasury product. FX restrictions also matter: the Nigerian official-vs-parallel-rate gap historically constrained cross-border utility, and cedi / pound capital-account frictions affect any balance intended to leave the domestic envelope.