Access Bank Plc has unveiled the Access SME Application at its maiden MSME Digital Growth Conference, held on Friday 25 July 2026 at the bank’s head office in Victoria Island, Lagos.
The conference, themed “AI for SMEs: Scaling Through Digital Tools,” brought together entrepreneurs, business leaders, policymakers, and technology experts to explore how artificial intelligence can accelerate the growth and competitiveness of Nigeria’s small businesses — with the Federal Government endorsing the initiative as a critical component of the country’s $1 trillion economy ambition.
Read also: Standard Chartered completes transfer of Cameroon business to Access bank
What the Access SME app does
The Access SME Application is designed to help small businesses manage their daily operations from a single digital platform. It consolidates financial services, business management tools, and AI-powered features that support inventory management, customer insights, supply chain optimisation, and business decision-making — functions that most Nigerian SMEs currently manage across multiple disconnected platforms or handle manually.
Access Bank’s Head of SME Banking, Abiodun Olubitan, described MSMEs as the bank’s most important customer segment, noting that they contribute approximately 50 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP and account for 84 per cent of national employment. She stressed that the bank’s commitment extends well beyond access to finance, encompassing capacity building, innovation, and practical solutions tailored to how small businesses actually operate.
Almost half of Nigeria’s small businesses fail within their first year, according to Professor Sunday Adebisi of the University of Lagos Business School, who spoke at the event. The businesses most likely to survive, he said, are those that embrace technology early enough to use it as an operational advantage rather than discovering it too late as a survival tool.
Read also: Access Bank opens applications for Womenpreneur Pitch-a-Ton 2025
The government’s position
Presidential Senior Special Assistant on Entrepreneurship Development, Chalya Shagaya, described MSMEs as central to President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, calling entrepreneurs the people who will drive the $1 trillion economy. She noted that President Tinubu has signed a national AI Policy mandating the establishment of capacity-building hubs across the country to equip young entrepreneurs with digital and AI skills.
Shagaya was direct about the urgency: technology has become essential for business growth, and entrepreneurs who fail to adopt AI risk being left behind in an economy that is moving rapidly toward digital infrastructure as its primary competitive layer. She added that AI tools now enable businesses to automate inventory management, gain customer insights, and optimise supply chains without incurring significant costs — making adoption increasingly viable even for micro-enterprises.
Read also: Nigerian banks slashed N5.45tn in loans to 8 key sectors in 2025 as CBN ended forbearance
Why this moment matters
The conference brought together Mastercard, Huawei, World Trade Center Lagos, Dataleum, and Aktivate Labs alongside government officials and banking experts — a convergence of public and private stakeholders around a single message: digital adoption among Nigerian SMEs is no longer optional. For the 39 million businesses that make up Nigeria’s MSME sector, the tools to compete on price and efficiency are increasingly available; the remaining challenge is awareness, access, and the confidence to integrate them into daily operations.
The Access SME App is one entry point. Whether it moves the needle for small businesses at scale will depend on how effectively the bank extends its reach beyond the entrepreneurs already attending conferences in Victoria Island to those running market stalls, manufacturing floors, and service businesses across the rest of the country.
