Are businesses ever cautious about adopting new financial products and providers? What does that look like?
In fintech, customers are very cautious because the cost of being wrong is very real. For B2C it’s quite straightforward. For B2B, business owners are concerned not just about themselves but about their customers, because they use your platform to serve their own end customers. So the conversation is about establishing that you’re credible and can be trusted.
That can mean asking about licences. I work with a digital assets company, so business customers want to know whether we’re licensed by the SEC and CBN, whether we have the liquidity to support them, and whether we can name other companies we work with. The most important thing in the financial space is usually licensing. People want to know you won’t just shut down and take their money.
A business adopting a new financial product isn’t trying a feature. It’s exposing its cash flow, its operations and often its customers’ trust to a third party’s reliability.
In African markets, many businesses have lived through failed platforms, downtime and providers who overpromised and underdelivered. They learned the hard way.
How do you build trust with businesses whose trust in other products has been broken?
You have to build credibility before you sell. Case studies help: businesses like to see a company similar to theirs already using your solution successfully. Third-party validation, regulatory licensing, security certifications and recognisable partnerships carry weight, especially when customers can verify them rather than just take your word.
In B2B, referrals and partnerships are often the entire credibility engine. A referral from a trusted company is a shortcut, because trust is transferred to you. Existing customers willing to speak on your behalf are worth more than any campaign.
Recently a customer told us he’d seen a case study we wrote. His use case was similar, so he thought, “If this company can trust them, then I should check them out too.”
Transparent pricing. If you quote a fee and the customer later discovers additional ones, they feel deceived.
Crisis communication. Buyers are watching how you behave under pressure. Say there’s downtime, that you’re aware, and that you’re fixing it.
Verifiable regulatory status. The CBN website lists licensed and registered companies, so anyone doubting a provider can check.
Your B2B product cannot be for everybody
In B2C you can run ads across many channels because the market is huge. In B2B you have to be clear about who the product is for: enterprises, SMEs, the informal sector? Once your ICPs, positioning and messaging are defined, you know the right distribution channels, and the rest becomes easier.
Whatever you say your product can do, it needs to do. If you promise 10x speed and deliver 2x, the trust you’ve built keeps eroding. You need evidence, not just promises.
Is it possible for growth and marketing teams to unintentionally create distrust?
Yes. Sales sometimes promises an experience that isn’t attainable. The customer comes on board and finds onboarding slow and full of friction. Once they’re in that funnel, their scepticism is already being confirmed. It also happens when support and marketing tell slightly different stories.
As a product marketing manager, I make sure sales, marketing, product and support are aligned. We have sales enablement materials covering what each product does, pricing and use cases. We don’t promise roadmap products, only what’s available. Support is looped into what we tell customers, and I join sales calls regularly.
If a customer asks for something we don’t have, we say: “It’s on the roadmap for Q4. If you’re willing to wait, we’ll check back.” It’s better to be honest than to string them along.
What changes commercially when a B2B customer genuinely trusts your product?
B2B sales cycles are long, anywhere from zero to three months to close. When a customer already trusts you, that cycle shortens dramatically because you spend less time proving credibility and more on fit and implementation. Expansion becomes natural: a business that trusts you with more transactions opens you to more use cases and locations without being resold every time. Retention becomes a consequence of the relationship.
Honestly, trust is one of the most underrated growth channels in B2B fintech. Word of mouth between businesses that trust each other’s judgement can convert someone who was unsure more effectively than a paid ad. We’ve had customers refer us because they found us reliable, and those businesses may never have seen our ads.
Final notes for B2B marketing teams
One misconception I had was that you could build trust primarily through messaging. You can put “Trust us” on your website, but that can only be taken at face value. Trust is built through consistency over time, and messaging just communicates and reinforces it. I used to believe the right campaign could accelerate trust. What I’ve learned is that trust has a natural pace, especially with businesses that have been burned before.
Lead with transparency. Be specific about what your product can do, and resist leading with big claims. Say you’re the fastest provider, then have a transaction fail, and new customers go back to someone they’ve trusted longer.
Build your case study and reference infrastructure early, with the customers who trusted you first. Don’t wait for a big logo everybody recognises.
Be honest in every communication. Overstate something and you don’t just lose that customer: they’ll tell other businesses about the bad experience.
You cannot market your way out of a trust deficit. You can only earn your way out of it. Marketing’s real job is to communicate that earning honestly and consistently.
Sceptical customers are not looking for a better pitch. They’re looking for evidence that you’ll behave the same way in month 12, month 13 and month 20 as you did at the start.