Nigerian fintech Saly AI has surpassed 20,000 users and processed more than ₦1.5 billion ($1.1 million) in transaction volume as the company expands its conversational financial services across WhatsApp and Telegram.
SalyPay, the company behind Saly AI, has announced that its financial platform has crossed 20,000 users and processed more than ₦1.5 billion ($1.1 million) in transaction volume.
The milestone comes as Saly expands its product offering beyond domestic payments to include cross-border transactions, virtual dollar cards and crypto-backed card experiences, while continuing development of Saly Chain, its Base-powered Layer 3 blockchain infrastructure.
A key part of the company’s expansion is making these financial services accessible directly through messaging platforms that users already rely on, particularly WhatsApp and Telegram.
Rather than requiring users to download and navigate multiple financial applications, Saly AI allows users to interact with supported financial services through conversational commands on WhatsApp and Telegram.
Users can access services including sending and receiving money, paying bills, managing financial activities, purchasing supported digital services, initiating cross-border transactions and accessing dollar-denominated card products through the Saly ecosystem.
According to Williams Peter, Co-founder of SalyPay, the company’s latest milestone represents both product adoption and a shift in its broader strategy.
“Crossing 20,000 users and ₦1.5 billion in transaction volume is an important milestone for Saly because it shows that people are using the platform for real financial activities. But we see this as more than a user-growth milestone. We are building a financial infrastructure that makes it possible for people to interact with different financial services from platforms they already use every day.”
Bringing financial services to WhatsApp and Telegram
Saly’s conversational approach is designed around a simple premise: financial services should be accessible without requiring users to learn a new interface for every transaction.
Through Saly AI, users can communicate with the platform through WhatsApp and Telegram, making it possible to access supported financial services within familiar messaging environments.
For example, instead of navigating several menus to complete a financial task, a user can communicate their request conversationally and Saly AI processes the request through its underlying financial infrastructure.
The company believes this approach can reduce friction for users who already use messaging platforms for communication, commerce and business activities.
The expansion also enables Saly to bring multiple financial services into a single conversational experience.
These include domestic transfers, bill payments, cross-border transactions, virtual dollar cards and crypto-backed card services available in both virtual and physical formats.
“WhatsApp and Telegram are already part of how millions of people communicate and conduct business,” said Peter. “We believe financial services should be able to meet users there. Our objective is to make the interaction with money feel as natural as sending a message while maintaining the infrastructure required to execute the transaction securely.”
Expanding into cross-border transactions
The company’s expansion also includes cross-border transactions, giving supported users access to international money movement through the same conversational channels.
Cross-border payments remain an important requirement for African consumers and businesses, including freelancers, creators, merchants, families and companies working with international customers and service providers.
Saly says bringing cross-border transactions into its existing WhatsApp and Telegram experience is part of its effort to reduce the number of platforms users need to navigate when managing money across different markets.
The company is also expanding its card offering.
Saly users can access virtual dollar cards, while the company’s crypto-backed card offering extends to both virtual and physical cards, allowing supported digital assets to be connected to everyday payment use cases.
These products form part of Saly’s broader strategy to connect traditional financial services, digital payments and blockchain-based infrastructure within one ecosystem.
Building the infrastructure behind Saly AI
While Saly AI serves as the user-facing financial experience, the company is also developing Saly Chain, a public Layer 3 blockchain built on Base.
Saly Chain is being developed as an infrastructure layer for Saly’s own products, with a longer-term objective of enabling businesses and developers to build financial and other real-world applications on top of the infrastructure.
The company says its decision to develop Saly Chain is driven by the need for more specialised infrastructure as its financial services expand.
“Saly AI is the experience users interact with, while Saly Chain is the infrastructure we are building underneath it,” Peter said. “Our ambition is for Saly Chain to eventually power more than Saly. We want businesses and developers to be able to build applications and financial services on top of the infrastructure without having to build the entire underlying stack themselves.”
The Layer 3 is being built on Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 network incubated by Coinbase, allowing Saly to develop specialised infrastructure while remaining connected to the broader Ethereum ecosystem.
From a fintech application to financial infrastructure
Saly’s latest milestone marks a broader evolution in the company’s strategy.
The company initially focused on providing users with access to everyday financial services through a unified digital experience. As adoption has grown, Saly says it has increasingly focused on the infrastructure required to support more complex financial interactions.
The company’s roadmap now spans conversational artificial intelligence, payments, cross-border transactions, digital cards, blockchain infrastructure and developer services.
The 20,000-user milestone and ₦1.5 billion transaction volume provide an early measure of adoption as the company continues to expand these capabilities.
Saly says transaction activity is also helping inform its product development, infrastructure design and future expansion into additional markets.
Building from Nigeria for a wider market
Saly is being built from Nigeria with ambitions to serve users and businesses across Africa and other markets.
The company says its experience operating in Nigeria provides an opportunity to develop infrastructure around challenges such as fragmented payment systems, multiple currencies, cross-border transactions and different financial service providers.
“Starting from Nigeria gives us an opportunity to solve problems in one of the most dynamic financial technology markets in Africa,” Peter said. “Our ambition is to take what we are building beyond Nigeria and develop infrastructure that can support businesses and users across different markets.”
With more than 20,000 users and ₦1.5 billion in transaction volume already processed, Saly says its next phase will focus on expanding its conversational financial services across WhatsApp and Telegram, growing its cross-border capabilities and continuing development of Saly Chain.
The company ultimately aims to connect users, businesses and developers to a broader financial infrastructure through a combination of artificial intelligence, payments and blockchain technology.
Saly AI: salypay.com
Saly Chain: salychain.com
