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backWhen we integrated the Corporate Affairs Commission business-name registration into our business banking app, the aim was to make it easier for informal businesses to enter the formal economy. But over time, we noticed a pattern: when a name was rejected, many customers got stuck. They read the error message, hit a wall, and simply moved on.
That gap needed fixing, and Victor, a backend engineer who joined Moniepoint through the DreamDevs programme ten months ago, built an error-detection logic for the solution. An AI-powered name-suggestion engine that steps in when a proposed name is rejected, reads the reason for the rejection, considers the nature of the business, and offers alternatives that make sense.
Where it all started
Victor studied Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the University of Benin. In his third year, he took a Computer Organisation and Architecture course that fascinated him on the relationship between hardware, software, and the systems that power computers. So he started learning more about programming to understand how these systems function. The more he learned, the more he wanted to understand how to build them properly, not just how things worked.
That curiosity shaped how he moved through university.
Towards the end of his undergraduate studies, Victor knew he wanted to pursue a career in fintech. He wanted to build financial tools that actually worked for people, work that felt meaningful to him. He was even more inspired by Mitchell Elegbe, the founder of Interswitch and an alumnus of the University of Benin, who had been in the same department as him. This conviction led him to teach himself Java. Victor was determined to acquire the skills that would qualify him for the career he wanted, which meant finding ways to learn beyond the classroom. He read books and watched tutorials, constantly motivated by curiosity and his drive to be ready when an opportunity came along.
A month after graduation, Victor got an internship at Consistent Trust Microfinance Bank. It was his real chance to build for actual users. While working on interbank payment integrations, card integrations, and learning ISO 8583 messaging, he learned firsthand that building financial systems requires a strong focus on reliability, security, and attention to detail.
The training ground
Victor was at the NYSC (National Youth Service Corps) orientation camp when the opportunity he had been waiting for showed up. A friend who knew he had always wanted to work at Moniepoint told him about DreamDevs. He knew immediately that he wanted in.
DreamDevs is Moniepoint’s graduate training program that helps recent computer science and engineering graduates get real-world experience. The top applicants are selected from a pool of thousands of applications through rigorous technical assessments and then participate in a 9-week bootcamp, where they are trained by top-tier engineers from Moniepoint.
Victor was part of the first cohort of DreamDevs, and while he had some experience, the bootcamp was a different ball game for him. Every week brought something new to figure out, and he knew he had to get better with every challenge. “We had to learn about cloud technologies like the Google Cloud Platform tools, and this was unfamiliar territory to me. But with time, I was able to figure it out.” What stood out about him from early on was how he engaged the tutors, not just what he knew. He was asking the right questions, improving with every piece of feedback he received, and helping others with the Java knowledge he already had.
The biggest learning curve came towards the end of the programme, when he had to deploy and manage applications for his final project. “We had learned about the Google Cloud Platform and Kubernetes, but deploying multiple services under a deadline made everything intense. It taught me how to troubleshoot quickly, collaborate effectively and stay calm under pressure.”
A full-time role
At the end of the programme, top performers receive internship offers. Victor, however, received an offer for a full-time Associate Backend Engineer role. During the bootcamp, he told his closest friends that he wasn't just aiming for an internship but for a full-time role at Moniepoint, and he got just that.
Victor had worked hard, and he knew it, but the stakes were high enough that he had learned to manage his expectations, so the offer came as a surprise. “I remember the HR person who called me saying that the team was taking a leap of faith by skipping the internship and taking me on full-time. Honestly, I was dumbfounded, but I also found it really beautiful because it was a rare thing to do”, he said.
Building the engine
Ten months in, Victor has built a solution that increased the completion rate of business name registrations by over 20%.
When the engineering team designed it, the goal was to make the experience genuinely useful at the point of registration, when a customer might be tempted to give up. That meant the engine had to be intelligent about why a name failed, not just that it did.
Victor's focus was the error-detection logic, the part of the system that reads a rejection and identifies its root cause, whether that's a name already taken, one too similar to an existing registration, or one that violates a naming rule. From there, the system applies a strategy layer that determines how to respond to each rejection type, and a context-aware logic that helps the AI generate alternatives that actually fit the kind of business the customer is building. The team also built in parallel validation, so every suggestion is checked before it ever reaches the customer.
For Victor, the most challenging part of this build wasn’t writing the code — it was making the right design decisions before implementing them. Throughout the process of building this engine, Victor and the rest of the team kept the person on the other end in mind: the business owner who had decided they were ready to start something and just needed the process to work.
“Every rejected suggestion and every bit of friction felt like a missed opportunity to help someone make good decisions for their business. That mindset kept me focused on creating the best possible experience.”
Growth and impact
Since the engine launched, more Nigerian businesses are crossing the threshold into the formal economy, gaining access to growth opportunities and operating with the legitimacy that registration brings.
For Victor, the impact is not abstract. He sees it in the numbers and feels it in the work itself. Looking back at his experience during the bootcamp, he describes it as years of learning compressed into nine intense and rewarding weeks. It pushed him beyond writing code to learning how to design systems, collaborate with teams and communicate technical decisions.
And beyond everything he’s now building as a DreamMaker, he’s still exploring his fascination with computer organisation, architecture, and every layer that makes modern software possible. For him, understanding the core of the systems that power everything he builds is what makes him stand out as an engineer.
If you're looking to build things that matter, as Victor did, you can start here: careers page.
