Solar PAYG & Installer Software in Nigeria

Instalment and lease-to-own billing, remote lock and unlock, field agent apps, mini-grid metering, collections and portfolio reporting — built for Nigerian solar installers, distributors, mini-grid developers and the people financing them.

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By Musskart Technology Editorial Team Published: Updated: Reviewed by Musskart Senior Engineers

250+

Projects Delivered Since 2020

PAYG

Billing & Remote Lock

Offline-First

Agent Apps For Rural Sites

₦6M–₦28M

Typical Build Range

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Why Solar Companies End Up Needing Custom Software

Nigeria has the largest off-grid population in the world — upwards of 80 million people without a reliable grid connection — and solar is the only thing reaching most of them at scale. But almost nobody in that market can pay ₦900,000 for a system up front. So the whole industry runs on credit, and the moment you sell on credit you are no longer just a solar company. You are a lender with hardware attached.

Lumos built the reference model in Nigeria: a modest amount down, then a fixed monthly payment for a term, with the system remotely disabled if the customer stops paying. The commercial logic works. The operational logic is what breaks, because running it means tracking thousands of customers, each on their own payment schedule, each with a physical asset in a village, and each capable of going quiet in month seven.

What we see when solar businesses come to us is always the same stack: a WhatsApp group for agents, an Excel workbook for the loan book, a separate spreadsheet for stock, paper receipts in the field, and a director who cannot answer how much is actually outstanding across the portfolio. It holds up to about two hundred customers. Past that it stops.

There are global platforms for this — Angaza and PaygOps among them — and for some businesses buying one is the right call. They are priced in dollars, usually per active unit, and they assume their own way of working. We build the alternative: a system shaped around how your business already sells, priced in naira, owned by you, and modifiable when NERC changes something or you launch a product the platform did not anticipate.

The PAYG Engine

Mini-Grids and Metered Supply

If you develop or operate mini-grids under the NERC framework rather than selling home systems, the software problem is different: you are billing consumption, not repaying an asset.

  • Prepaid meter integration with vending, token generation and the meter management your hardware vendor's protocol requires, plus reconciliation so vended value always ties to cash received.
  • Tariff management by customer class — residential, commercial, productive use — with time-of-use bands, lifeline rates and the ability to change tariffs on approval without a code release.
  • Consumption analytics per connection, load profiling across the site, and the productive-use reporting that developers need for grant and results-based financing claims.
  • Generation and site monitoring — solar yield, battery state of health, generator run hours, outages — because a mini-grid's economics live or die on availability and nobody is on site to notice.
  • Multi-site portfolio view for operators running many communities, with revenue per site, collection rate, and cost per kilowatt-hour delivered compared across the estate.

A regulatory note. Mini-grid generation, distribution and tariffs sit under the NERC framework and, in several states, the new state electricity regulators. Those permits, registrations and tariff approvals belong to you as the operator. Musskart builds software and holds no energy licence — we build the system that makes operating under your permit practical, including the reporting your regulator asks for.

What Your Financier Will Ask For

Most Nigerian solar businesses at scale are funded by someone — a development finance institution, an impact fund, a results-based financing facility, or a bank. Those funders look at your receivables book, and how you report on it decides your cost of capital and sometimes whether the next tranche lands at all.

Portfolio-at-risk reporting

PAR 30, 60 and 90 across the book, by product, by agent, by state and by cohort. Vintage analysis showing how each month's sales cohort has repaid over time — the single most revealing number in a PAYG business, and the one almost nobody can produce on request.

Collection efficiency

Expected against actual collections per period, first-payment default rate, recovery rate on locked units, and repossession outcomes.

Unit economics

Cost to acquire, cost of goods, servicing cost and expected lifetime revenue per customer, by product line. The number that tells you which product to stop selling.

Impact and verification data

Connections by location, households and businesses served, estimated displacement of generator and kerosene use, and the audit trail behind each claim, exportable in the formats RBF programmes require.

Cost, Timeline and Where to Start

Installer operations

₦6,000,000 – ₦10,000,000

For companies selling outright or on short credit: quoting and proposals with system sizing, customer records, jobs and installation scheduling, inventory by serial, invoicing and payments, technician app and after-sales. Ten to fourteen weeks.

Full PAYG platform

₦12,000,000 – ₦22,000,000

Everything above plus the lending engine, token generation and remote lock, USSD and multi-channel collections, offline agent app, arrears and recovery workflow, and the portfolio reporting pack. Four to six months.

Mini-grid / multi-site

₦18,000,000 – ₦28,000,000

Metering and vending integration, tariffs, consumption analytics, site and generation monitoring, and a portfolio view across communities. Five to eight months, with hardware integration timelines driven by your meter vendor.

Where we would start you. Not with the whole thing. The fastest route to value is the loan book and collections — get every customer, schedule, payment and arrears position into one system with USSD payment and automated reminders, which is typically eight to ten weeks. Collection rates usually move within the first two months on reminders alone. Add remote lock, then the agent app, then the reporting pack as the portfolio grows. Businesses that try to launch all of it at once spend six months building while their spreadsheet keeps rotting.

Related Musskart Pages

Billing utilities inside an estate?

If your business is metering and billing electricity or water inside a gated estate or a serviced building rather than selling solar systems, the closer fit is estate prepaid utility billing and token vending software. The vending and reconciliation engine is shared; the customer model is not.

Frequently Asked Questions

An installer operations system covering quoting and system sizing, customers, jobs, inventory by serial number, invoicing, a technician app and after-sales runs 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 Naira over ten to fourteen weeks. A full pay-as-you-go platform adds the lending engine, token generation and remote lock, USSD and multi-channel collections, an offline agent app, arrears workflow and portfolio reporting, and runs 12,000,000 to 22,000,000 Naira over four to six months. A mini-grid or multi-site build with meter and vending integration, tariff management, consumption analytics and site monitoring runs 18,000,000 to 28,000,000 Naira over five to eight months. Most businesses should start with the loan book and collections module alone, which is eight to ten weeks.

Two patterns, and we support both because the right one depends on your hardware. The offline token pattern generates a code against the device's own algorithm, valid for the period the customer has paid for. The customer pays, receives the code by SMS or over USSD, keys it into the unit and the system runs until the period expires. No connectivity is needed at the device, which matters in rural deployments. The connected pattern enables and disables the unit directly over GSM or IoT where the hardware supports it. In both cases token generation is idempotent and fully logged, so a customer who pays once cannot be charged twice for the same window, support can reissue a lost code without creating a duplicate, and you have an audit trail of every lock and unlock against every device.

In most cases yes. PAYG-enabled units from established manufacturers expose a documented token algorithm or an API, and we implement against whichever your supplier uses, including keeping several running in parallel if you sell more than one brand. Where a manufacturer's scheme is proprietary we will need their documentation or SDK, which they normally provide to distributors, and that is a conversation to start early because it is the most common cause of delay in these projects. For connected units we integrate over the vendor's platform or directly over GSM. What we do not do is supply or certify hardware, and we will tell you honestly if a device you have chosen has no usable integration path.

No, and building as though they do is the classic mistake in this market. The agent application is offline-first. Agents register customers with identity capture and geolocation, run your credit screening rules, assign stock from their own allocation, sign off installations with photographs, and take cash with a digital receipt, all with no connectivity. Everything queues locally and syncs when a signal appears, with conflict handling designed so that a day of collections in an area with no network is never lost or double-counted. Customers themselves pay over USSD, which works on any feature phone and returns the unlock token within the same session.

Selling your own goods on instalment credit is generally treated differently from operating as a lender, but the line matters and it moves depending on how you structure it. If you charge interest, sell receivables to a third party, or take deposits, you should take specific legal advice on whether CBN or state moneylender requirements apply to your arrangement. If you develop or operate mini-grids, generation and distribution permits and tariff approvals sit under the NERC framework and, increasingly, state electricity regulators. Musskart builds software and holds no energy or financial licence. We build the system that makes operating under your permits practical, including the regulatory reporting, but the permits and the legal structure are yours.

For some businesses that is genuinely the right answer and we will say so. They are mature products with the token schemes already built. The reasons clients come to us instead are usually cost, control and fit. Those platforms price in dollars, typically per active unit, so the cost scales with your portfolio forever and moves with the exchange rate. They assume a particular way of operating, so you adapt your process to the product. And when you want something they do not support, such as a specific NERC reporting format, a productive-use financing product or an unusual commission structure, you wait for their roadmap. A custom build costs more once, is priced and maintained in naira, and is yours to change. The crossover point is usually somewhere between two and five thousand active units.

Get Your Solar Loan Book Out of Excel

Tell us how many active customers you carry, how you collect today and whether your units support remote lock. We will come back with a phased scope, starting with the module that moves your collection rate first.

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