Credit Direct Adds Personal Loans to App Amid FCCPC Reset

In Short

• Credit Direct has added its personal loan product to its mobile app.
• The move comes as Nigeria’s FCCPC pushes a single registration regime for digital lenders under the 2025 lending regulations.
• Approved lender counts are now in the hundreds, with non-compliant loan apps facing bans.

What Happened

Credit Direct has added personal loans to the Credit Direct mobile app, expanding a product it already offers via WhatsApp, USSD (a short code menu on feature phones), web, and sales agents.

The timing matters. Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, FCCPC, recently moved to bring app-based and online lenders under one registration process. This followed the end of the compliance deadline under the Digital, Electronic, Online and Non-Traditional Consumer Lending Regulations, 2025.

Reports earlier in 2026 put the number of approved and conditionally approved lenders near 500. Other reporting cited 457 of 521 registered digital lenders as fully approved by January 2026, with additional conditional approvals and around 100 platforms at risk of being banned for non-compliance.

Credit Direct is a CBN-licensed lender within the FCMB Group. It has operated for close to two decades, which gives it an advantage in a market now placing more weight on licensing and enforcement.

Why It Matters

Digital lending in Nigeria is getting more formal. The market has grown, and the Central Bank of Nigeria has also strengthened repayment enforcement through the Global Standing Instruction, a system that allows lenders to recover unpaid balances from other BVN-linked accounts.

By moving loan application, disbursement, and repayment into its own app, Credit Direct can reduce servicing costs and control the customer journey. The product design also points to tighter risk management, including structured loan sizes up to ₦20 million, tenures from one to 36 months, and repayments tied to salary deductions for civil servants or direct debit mandates for others.

The shift also reflects a broader push toward embedded finance, where lending sits inside a wallet that also holds savings or fund management features. In a tighter regulatory environment, lenders with established compliance and distribution channels are likely to consolidate share as smaller, non-compliant loan apps exit.