Fintech SME Research Pilot
UnifiedLayer is recruiting a limited cohort of fintech SMEs in Nigeria and France to take part in a 15-day guided data-integration trial. The trial is part of a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) research project studying how Africa-centric data infrastructure serves fintech SMEs. This page is the participant information notice — please read it before applying.
Who can take part
- You are a digital payment provider, mobile wallet platform, micro-lender, or another fintech-oriented SME
- You operate in Nigeria, or you are connected to the Francophone African fintech ecosystem through France
- Your business already generates real operational or transactional data
- You use at least two active digital systems (e.g. Paystack + spreadsheets, M-Pesa + a database)
- You are willing to complete a short pre-trial and post-trial assessment
What participation involves
Access request
You fill the same short form as every trial applicant, ticking the research-consent box.
Discovery call
A 15–20 minute conversation about your data setup, so we both confirm the trial is worth your time.
15-day guided trial
You use UnifiedLayer on your real data with hands-on onboarding support throughout.
Structured feedback
A short questionnaire at the end. Your answers become anonymised data points in the research.
The trial itself is free, and the guided onboarding means our team helps you connect your first sources. What we ask in return is honest feedback and about an hour of your time across the calls and questionnaires.
Your rights and how research data is handled
- Participation is entirely voluntary — you can decline or withdraw at any time, without giving a reason, and withdrawal does not affect any commercial relationship with UnifiedLayer
- Your organisation is anonymised in all research outputs: the thesis refers to participants only by sector and size labels (e.g. "a Nigerian payment provider, 11–50 staff"), never by name
- Anonymised quotes from calls or feedback forms may appear in the thesis; you can ask for any quote to be excluded
- We collect: your form answers, discovery-call notes, platform usage measures (e.g. sources connected, rows synced), and your questionnaire responses. We do not analyse the contents of your business data for research
- Research records are kept securely for the duration of the doctoral programme and deleted afterwards
- Calls are not recorded unless you explicitly agree beforehand
Before a trial begins, participating organisations receive a full consent form covering these points in detail. Questions about the study at any time: hello@unifiedlayer.io.