Sub-headline: The Nigerian fintech infrastructure startup, also known as Wireless Beta, is now offering a complete suite for businesses to issue ATM cards and deploy USSD banking through a single dashboard and API.
Businesses in Nigeria looking to offer financial services to their customers have long faced a difficult choice: build a sleek, modern card program for the smartphone crowd or invest in clunky USSD infrastructure to reach the other half of the market. Until now, doing both seamlessly has required juggling multiple vendors and complex integrations.
Abuja-based fintech infrastructure company Wireless Verify (Wireless Beta) is launching a solution designed to change that. The company has unveiled a comprehensive, API-driven platform that allows any business—from fintech startups to established enterprises—to issue physical NGN ATM cards and deploy custom USSD banking services from a single codebase.
The Last Mile Problem, Solved
With smartphone penetration still hovering around 40%, a huge segment of Nigeria’s economic activity happens on basic feature phones. USSD remains the king of channels for the mass market, enabling everything from money transfers to airtime purchases. Simultaneously, the demand for physical and virtual cards for online and ATM access continues to surge.
Wireless Verify is positioning itself as the single infrastructure layer to serve both worlds. “The Nigerian market isn’t just one market,” a representative from Wireless Verify explained. “You have tech-savvy users who need instant virtual cards for subscriptions, and you have a vast majority who rely on USSD for their daily banking. With our platform, you can now serve both demographics with one integration.”
The Key Benefits: Why Build on Wireless Verify?
For any business, from a scaling fintech to an enterprise, choosing the right infrastructure partner is critical. Wireless Verify offers distinct advantages that translate directly to business growth and operational efficiency.
- Dual Market Reach, Single Integration: The most significant benefit is the ability to acquire and serve both online and offline customers through one platform. You’re not just building a card program; you’re building a financial service for all Nigerians, regardless of their internet connectivity.
- Unprecedented Speed to Market: Forget months of development and complex compliance negotiations. With Wireless Verify, you can have virtual cards instantly and white-plain physical cards ready for pickup in just 24-48 hours. This allows you to launch new products and features at a pace that outruns the competition.
- Radical Cost Efficiency: By consolidating card issuing and USSD on one platform, you eliminate the cost and complexity of managing multiple vendors. The white-plain card option is a game-changer, removing the six-figure BIM onboarding fee, making physical card programs accessible for a wider range of businesses.
- Developer-Centric Design: Your engineering team can stop wrestling with legacy systems. Our RESTful APIs, comprehensive SDKs, clear documentation, and real-time webhooks are built for modern development, allowing your team to integrate in hours, not months.
- Enterprise-Grade Security & Reliability: We handle the heavy lifting of compliance and security. As a PCI DSS compliant platform with end-to-end encryption, your data and your customers’ transactions are always secure. Our transparent workflow with pool accounts ensures financial integrity at every step.
How It Works: A Seamless, Secure Transaction Flow
Understanding the mechanics behind the platform is key to seeing its value. Here is exactly how a card transaction flows through the Wireless Verify infrastructure, ensuring security and reliability.
The process is built on a pool account model with real-time webhook communication, acting as a failsafe for every transaction.
- Fund Your Pool Account: The business starts by funding its master pool account with Wireless Verify. This acts as the settlement account, ensuring funds are always available for customer transactions.
- Customer Balance Check (Free): When a customer checks their balance via POS, ATM, or app, Wireless Verify sends a webhook notification to the business’s server. This check is completely free and allows the business to verify the customer’s balance in real-time.
- Customer Initiates Withdrawal: For a withdrawal, the process is doubly secure. Wireless Verify first checks the business’s pool balance, then sends another webhook to confirm the individual customer has sufficient funds. Crucially, the transaction only proceeds if both checks are positive. If there’s a failure or timeout, no debit occurs, preventing financial discrepancies.
- Transaction Processing: Once confirmed, Wireless Verify processes the card transaction through the payment gateway (POS, ATM, or online).
- Real-Time Notification: A final webhook is sent to the business, providing a real-time update on the transaction’s status. This allows for instant balance updates and fraud monitoring.
- Continuous Operation: The business must keep its pool account funded. This system ensures a smooth, secure experience, with a low ₦20 fee only charged if a transaction fails due to insufficient funds in the pool account.
This workflow, with its double-validation and real-time communication, gives businesses complete control and visibility, eliminating the guesswork and risk often associated with payment processing.
What’s on Offer? A Closer Look at the Products
The new platform from Wireless Verify is built for speed and reach, offering two core pillars:
1. Complete Card Issuing Infrastructure
Businesses can now issue physical NGN cards (Verve and Mastercard) and USD virtual Mastercard directly through the Wireless Verify REST API or its intuitive dashboard.
- White-Plain Cards: For businesses wanting to move fast, Wireless Verify offers “white-plain” physical cards. With a one-time setup fee of ₦50,000 and no costly BIM onboarding fees, companies can have custom-branded cards ready for pickup in just 24 hours.
- Co-branded & Virtual: For larger programs, fully customized co-branded cards are available (with the requisite financial license), while virtual USD cards can be issued instantly for just $3 each, perfect for international transactions.
2. USSD as a Service
To tackle the offline market, Wireless Verify allows companies to deploy dedicated (e.g., *123#) or shared USSD codes.
- Custom Flows: Businesses can design custom menu flows for balance checks, transfers, and payments.
- Webhook Integration: The system links directly to a business’s webhook, enabling real-time interaction and session management, even without an internet connection.
- Pricing: Sessions are priced accessibly at ₦7.5 to ₦10 per 20-second session, with one-time setup fees starting at ₦250,000 for shared codes.
Developer Experience First
True to its tech-focused approach, Wireless Verify has prioritized the developer journey. The platform offers well-documented RESTful APIs with JSON responses, webhooks for real-time event notifications, a sandbox environment for testing, and SDK support.
A simple code snippet provided by the company shows just how easy it is to get started:
import requests
# Initialize API request
url = "https://api.wirelessbeta.com/v1/cards"
headers = {
"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY",
"Content-Type": "application/json"
}
# Create a virtual card
payload = {
"type": "virtual",
"currency": "USD",
"card_type": "mastercard",
"cardholder_name": "John Doe"
}
response = requests.post(url, json=payload, headers=headers)
card = response.json()
print(f"Card created: ****{card['last_four']}")
A Growing Ecosystem
Beyond cards and USSD, Wireless Verify is building a broader ecosystem of financial tools, offering add-on services like BVN and NIN verification, a bank transfer API, and even WhatsApp bot integrations.
For Nigerian businesses tired of stitching together disparate solutions to reach their entire customer base, Wireless Verify’s launch signals a new era of unified, accessible fintech infrastructure.
Ready to launch your card and USSD program?
Wireless Verify is now open for business. Companies can sign up for instant access to the sandbox and start integrating today.
- Get Started: [Link]
- Contact: +2347018179174 | card@wbalite.com