Building Trust Through Reliability
The bank alert - that confirmation message after a transaction - is often taken for granted until it fails to arrive. For millions of Africans, this critical service is powered by Termii, a Lagos-based company founded in 2017 by Emmanuel Gbolade, Ayomide Awe, and Atinuke Idowu.
Termii provides the infrastructure that allows businesses to send OTPs (one-time passwords), transaction alerts, fraud checks, and customer messages across multiple channels including SMS, voice, email, and WhatsApp. With over 16,000 businesses using its platform, Termii reaches approximately 10 million Africans monthly - a significant increase from just one million in its early years.
The company’s growth addresses a critical industry problem: silent SMS delivery failures where messages simply don’t arrive without explanation. Industry estimates suggest this affects 10-15% of verification attempts, potentially costing businesses customers and revenue.
Guaranteeing Delivery Where Others Can’t
According to Termii’s General Manager for Nigeria, Olajuwon Abayomi, the issue stems from multiple factors including:
- Banks sometimes not sending requests for OTPs
- Telco downtime preventing message delivery
- Technical challenges with API integrations
- Varying SMS encoding requirements across countries
Termii’s solution has been to evolve from simply sending messages to guaranteeing their delivery. The company now uses AI-powered systems that monitor delivery routes in real time, predict potential failures, and automatically reroute messages before customers notice anything.
“The best compliment our product gets is silence,” Abayomi explained at a recent event in Lagos. “When we do our job well, the alert arrives seamlessly, transactions complete without issue, and no one gives us a second thought.”
The company’s reliability has earned it trust from major players including banks, fintech companies, payment processors, and telecoms.
From Startup to Essential Infrastructure
Termii’s journey hasn’t been easy. The founders faced skepticism from established institutions wary of routing critical communications through a startup. They spent years building credibility one client at a time in an environment where carrier infrastructure itself could fail without warning.
“We were essentially building on roads that were still under construction,” Abayomi recalled. “You can’t promise 99.9% delivery if the underlying network doesn’t offer it, so we had to build the intelligence that makes unreliable systems behave reliably.”
This focus on reliability has attracted investment from international firms including Y Combinator and Kepple Africa Ventures, with Termii raising a total of $5.3 million to date.
By ensuring financial alerts reach their intended recipients, Termii is quietly powering digital economies across Africa while building trust in the often-invisible infrastructure that underpins modern banking.