Fintech companies

FFlutterwave lutterwave was established in 2016 by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Gabriel Agboola. The company provides technology infrastructure and services to enable global merchants, payment service providers and pan-african banks accept and process payments on any channel (web, mobile, ATM and POS).

Paystack

Paystack was founded in 2016 by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi. The start-up provides a multi-channel payment option for merchants across countries to enable them to accept credit and debit payments from customers around the world. In November 2018, the company announced that it processes over N10 billion ($27.5 million) worth of transactions every month. Over 23,000 businesses use its platform including big names like Taxify, MTN, Lagos Internal Revenue Service (LIRS), Iroko TV, Businessday Media, Betway, among many others. Paystack recently secured $8 million Series A round of funding from Visa and Stripe. It has been making plans to expand its services to Ghana.

Paga

Paga was founded in 2009 and publicly launched in 2011 by Tayo Oviosu. The company works as a digital platform to transfer money, pay bills, and buy things. The company acts as a mobile wallet where any user equipped with a mobile device can conduct transactional activities using their device.

In 2018, the company raised $10 million in a Series-b funding round led by London-based Global Innovation Fund, with participation from Goodwell Investments, Unreasonable Capital and Omidyar Network, along with Mauritius-based Adlevo Capital. The round of funding brought the total raised so far by Paga to $34.7 million in four rounds.

Piggyvest

Piggyvest was launched in 2016 by three entrepreneurs Somto Ifezue, Joseph Chibueze, and Odunayo Eweniyi. The company provides an online savings platform – like the traditional piggybank – to help users become better at saving their money. Using a saving process, Piggyvest makes periodic (daily, weekly, and monthly) deductions as stipulated by the user from the user’s account and saves it on their behalf. The deducted amount is stored in a digital wallet at an interest of 10 percent per annum.

There are over 230,000 users on Piggyvest whom the company has helped to save over N1 billion in January 2019 alone. In June 2018, Piggyvest announced it has raised $1.1 million from a group of investors led by Olumide Soyombo, founder of Leadpath Nigeria.

Carbon

The company formerly known as Paylater owe its roots to One Credit which was founded in 2012 by brothers Chijioke Dozie and Ngozi Dozie. Paylater itself was unveiled in 2016 as the first digital lender in Nigeria. The company introduced instant loans and later added services such as bill payments, airtime purchases, free credit reports, investments, personal finance management, and digital wallet that will come to make transacting cheaper and completely seamless.

The company rebranded to Carbon in April 2019 to reflect a deliberate transition to a fully-fledged digital financial services platform that now offers bill payments, fund transfers, and savings products, in addition to loans. Prior to the rebranding, Carbon had also secured a $5 million investment from Lendable, a technology-enabled funding provider, completed the acquisition of Amplify Pay and became the first African fintech start-up to secure credit ratings in 2018.

Cowrywise

Although work began on Cowrywise in 2016, the start-up was eventually launched in 2017 by Razaq Ahmed and Edward Popoola. The goal of the company is to democratize asset and wealth management services and make them available to everyone. In that sense, Cowrywise provides a high yield automated platform allowing users to deposit their money and cultivate a consistent savings and investment habit.

In 2018, the company was listed as one of the 50 Global Emerging Start-ups by Kairos, a New Yorkbased early-stage investment fund.

Riby Finance

Founded by Abolore Salami in May 2016, Riby Finance is a personal finance platform that offers cooperatives, company groups, employees, individuals, associations, and financial development institutions solutions to manage their financial activities. The solutions can be customized to solve specific client problems.

Riby was part of the FINTECH100 2017, a list of the top 100 start-ups in fintech across the globe compiled by KPMG and H2 Venture. The company was also one of the 20 finalists for the 1776 Challenge Global Cup. Riby currently has over 1 million users on its cooperative banking system.

Renmoney

Renmoney was founded by Stephen Jennings as part of the Renaissance Group. The company offers sameday loan origination and disbursement and was the first regional lender to use cloud technology from a traditional core banking vendor to lower its operational costs and support product innovation. Customers can quickly access loans of up to N4 million with Renmoney Micro-business Loans.

Renmoney has over 18,000 customers and operates from seven branch locations across Lagos state.

Surecredit

Surecredit a platform from Suregift – a gift card company founded by Adeoye Ojo, Babafemi Lawal, and Olaoluwa Samuel-biyi – was launched in 2016 to enable employees to obtain voucher loans with which they can pay for all they need at about 50 online and offline merchants without overstraining their salaries.

Employees can purchase a wide range of products, go on vacation, pay utility bills and access numerous services among others with a payment plan spread over a couple of months without incurring highinterest rates as they would when they approach banks and other credit service, providers.

Lidya

Lidya was founded by Tunde Kehinde and Eric Eksin, co-founders of Africa Courier Express (ACE) in 2016. The company was set up to help users of ACE initially open accounts, save money, build credit profiles, and access credit of between $500 to $15,000 to grow their businesses and handle short term personal needs.

Since inception, Lidya has granted more than 1,500 loans to help customers engaged in agriculture, hospitality, logistics, real estate or health in Africa. In 2017, the startup raised $1.25 million investment from Accion Venture Lab. It further announced another investment worth $6.9 million in a Series A round from Omidyar Network and Alitheia Capital.

Remita

Remita is a multi-device payment platform created by Systemspecs in 2005. The platform enables users to view their bank balances from different banks on a single screen, transfer money to one or more beneficiaries, pay bills, and view transaction reports. It also allows businesses to receive payments from customers through nine different channels, including the Remita Mobile app and website, internet banking, Point of Sales (POS) terminals, debit and credit cards, merchant’s website, bank branches, mobile wallets and standing order and direct debit.