Until late 2024, core banking applications remained largely invisible to the Nigerian public, discussed mostly within financial and technology circles. That changed when several major banks upgraded their systems and millions of customers experienced service disruptions. Years earlier, however, the leadership of Kuda had already concluded that owning its core banking engine could determine whether the digital bank would thrive or falter in a competitive market.
Founded as a neobank and now serving over seven million customers, Kuda initially relied on a third party core banking provider, the common route for most financial institutions in Nigeria. But as customer numbers surged shortly after its 2019 launch, the limitations of that system became increasingly evident. According to co founder and Chief Technology Officer Musty Mustapha, the external infrastructure struggled to scale, adapt to product demands or guarantee the level of uptime required for a digital first bank. The pressure forced a deeper question about the kind of institution Kuda intended to become.
The answer led to NERVE, Kuda’s in house built core banking system, developed quietly while the bank continued operating on its existing provider. Rather than betting the company’s survival on a risky overnight switch, engineers built and tested the new system in parallel. Designed using a microservices architecture to ensure flexibility and scalability, NERVE was engineered to handle thousands of transactions per second. Early load tests fell far short of that ambition, but iterative refinements eventually pushed performance to levels that could support rapid growth and real time processing at scale.
Migration day was not without setbacks, including unexpected production environment challenges that forced the team to revert temporarily to a more stable staging setup. Yet the long term impact has been significant. By owning its core infrastructure, Kuda reduced dependency risks, improved transaction speed, automated operational processes such as end of day routines and accelerated the launch of products including credit offerings and multi currency wallets. For the bank, the decision was less about cutting costs and more about securing reliability and control in an industry where the software ledger has become the true engine of modern banking.