TermFund Launches School Fees Financing Platform for Nigerian Families

Gwen Ifeonyemetalu did not start with a pitch deck.

She started with a question.
“I just wanted to know how bad the problem really was,” the TermFund Nigeria founder says. “So I asked Nigerian parents on Facebook.

And the answer came back so fast and so clearly that I knew immediately this is not a niche market.
This is everyone.”

The problem she was asking about is school fees. Specifically, the brutal reality that Nigeria’s private school system demands full payment on a single date a system that works perfectly for schools and catastrophically for the millions of Nigerian middle-income families whose incomes arrive in pieces, not lumps.

TermFund’s answer is elegant. Pay the school in full. Let the parent repay monthly.
“We are essentially restructuring a lump sum payment into something that matches how real Nigerian income actually flows,” Gwen explains. “We are not creating debt. We are creating alignment.”

The Traction Story

Seven days after announcing TermFund publicly with no advertising, no paid promotion, no marketing budget of any kind 120 Nigerian families had signed up.
Gwen does not seem surprised by this.
“The product-market fit was always going to be obvious,” she says. “When you solve a problem this universal this cleanly, people find you. You do not have to find them.”
The numbers behind the market validate her confidence. Nigeria has 13,000+ registered private schools. An estimated ₦2 trillion moves through the school fees market annually. And 57 percent of those schools report late or incomplete fees every single term.
“That 57 percent is not a failure of parents,” she says. “That is a structural gap that fintech should have filled years ago.”

The Model

TermFund disburses fees directly to schools never to parents and charges a single flat service fee of 8 to 13 percent depending on the repayment tenure chosen.
“Transparency is non-negotiable for us,” Gwen says. “We tell you the exact fee before you agree to anything. No surprises at the end. No compounding. No penalty calls at midnight. That is how you build trust in Nigeria by doing exactly what you said you would do.”

The Bigger Picture

Gwen sees TermFund not just as a consumer product but as infrastructure.

“Every school in Nigeria has a fees problem. Every parent in Nigeria has a fees problem. We are building the layer that sits between them and makes both sides whole. That is not a startup. That is infrastructure.”

A seed round is planned for 2026. Expansion beyond Abuja is on the roadmap.
But today, Gwen is focused on one thing.
“Our first families. Our first schools. Our first successful repayment cycle. That is where the real proof is.”She leans back and says it simply:
“No Nigerian child should miss school because of a cash flow problem. That is the whole mission.”