If you shake any tree, an Africa-focused remittance startup will fall out; so goes the joke. There’s a roll call of recognisable names in the sector: Lemfi, NALA, Raenest, and Grey. Yet these well-known companies rely on lesser-known payment businesses to succeed.
Take Fincra, a B2B startup that provides payment infrastructure that enables remittance companies to process cross-border transactions. Since 2023, Fincra has processed over $10 billion in transactions, serving clients like Lemfi, OneLiquidity, and Cleva. The company is profitable, though it declined to share specific figures.
Fincra has remained largely bootstrapped, having raised only a $120,000 investment from Techstars in 2022. Ayodele’s belief in organic growth over-reliance on external funding has shaped this approach.
“I don’t believe in funding as a growth strategy; I believe in adding value to people. If you add value, people will give you money,” Ayodele said.
As African businesses expand globally and more Africans work remotely for international firms, Fincra is at the forefront of a wave of startups facilitating seamless cross-border payments. The company competes with players like Kora and Verto but differentiates itself with its unique payment infrastructure that simplifies the complexities of cross-border transactions.
Fincra doesn’t view its competitors in the traditional sense. ‘In fact, the companies you might assume are our competitors are more likely to be our customers,’ says Ayodele. This mindset stems from Fincra’s strategy of empowering other businesses with its infrastructure rather than battling for direct market share
Building a cross-border payment rail from the ground up has been a monumental challenge. Beyond sourcing the right talent to develop such a complex system, navigating the diverse and often stringent regulations across multiple countries has proven to be a significant hurdle.
“In some countries, it can take about 48 hours to move local currency from one bank to another. You can’t innovate out of that.”
Ayodele believes more cross-border solutions are needed to enable the easy flow of money within Africa.
“We always look like for complimentary solutions. One company cannot necessarily solve cross-border problems across the continent. This means we need many more people building the solutions we are building. We believe that the prosperity of Africa lies in the easy flow of money,” Ayodele told TechCabal.
The company currently operates in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America and has plans to expand into the Francophone region.
“These markets are extremely sought after by our customers, so it’s a no-brainer that we go to those regions. Ultimately, we plan to be in all 54 African countries. Next year, we are looking at places like Egypt and Ethiopia,” Ayodele said.
Fincra has also faced its share of security challenges, particularly in the wake of fraud incidents that have plagued Nigeria’s financial sector.
“The only way to solve fraud as a financial technology provider is by building better technology,” Ayodele said. “We are all learning painful lessons, if you don’t put in the right measures, you get found out, you get hacked.”
Ayodele believes ecosystem collaboration and improved communication and awareness among users as other suggestions to curtail fraud.
Fincra has deprioritized issuing virtual cards, following a wider industry trend, because Ayodele believes the current workaround used by Nigerian fintechs is unsustainable. Fintech partners with U.S. or UK banks to issue dollar cards to Africans. However, Ayodele argues this approach is flawed, as it introduces fraud risks when non-US residents are issued cards in increasing numbers.
“The problem of issuing virtual cards is that when one fintech has a solution everybody tries to layer on top of it. It’s only a matter of time before fintech reaches a fraud threshold as the number of non-US residents issued cards increases.”
Ayodele believes the ultimate solution to issuing dollar cards is to identify the countries you want to issue to and get a paying sponsor from that country. “But then again, people don’t like to do hard things. It’s the hard things that will last.”
The business also claims it deprioritized issuing dollar cards after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced the Investors’ & Exporters’ FX Window (I&E FX Window).
“There is no joy in solving for what has already been solved. Ideally, every Nigerian bank should be capable of enabling naira cards for international payments. It is laziness that is not making every naira card work online.”
Fincra has no plans to launch a consumer-facing product but will launch multi-currency accounts for small businesses.
“We believe that it is faster to achieve our vision by building infrastructure for others rather than trying to face all the customers in Africa.”
In October 2024, the business secured a Third Party Payment Provider (TPPP) licence in South Africa, enabling it to offer Pay-In and Pay-Out services, including card payments, to registered and pre-approved businesses in the country. Fincra will begin its South African operation within the next month.
