Customers at Chicken Republic can now skip the card swipe and the cash fumble. CashAfrica, a Nigerian contactless payment infrastructure provider founded in 2024, has partnered with Food Concepts, the quick-service restaurant group behind Chicken Republic, PieXpress, and The Chop Box, to bring mobile tap-to-pay to Chicken Republic outlets across Nigeria. The rollout starts in Lagos before expanding to Abuja and other locations.
The way it works is straightforward. A customer opens a supported banking or fintech app, selects the tap-to-pay option, authenticates with Face ID or a fingerprint where required, and taps their phone against a compatible POS terminal. Behind the scenes, PalmPay's terminals handle the customer-facing interaction, CashAfrica's CashTap technology, which runs on near-field communication (NFC), powers the contactless layer, and ChamsSwitch manages transaction settlement and regulatory compliance.
The partnership gives CashAfrica real reach. Chicken Republic operates more than 350 outlets across Nigeria and posted sales of 60.9 billion naira, about 45.7 million US dollars, in 2023. That kind of footprint makes it one of the more consequential proving grounds for tap-to-pay adoption in the country.
This deal builds on moves CashAfrica has already been making. In May, the company partnered with ChamsSwitch to resolve regulatory and transaction-routing hurdles that had slowed its infrastructure rollout. Before that, it integrated with PalmPay, which began piloting contactless functionality on 1,000 POS terminals in February 2025. CashAfrica CEO Malik Asamu described the Food Concepts partnership as bringing mobile tap-to-pay mainstream, adding a new layer of payment possibilities built, as he put it, "the Pan-African way."
With Lagos as the launchpad and a national chain as the test case, the question now is how quickly Nigerian consumers warm up to tapping their phones at the counter, and whether other QSR chains take notice.
Originally published by TechCabal.