“In 2023, we moved from negative to positive gross profit, and we want to be profitable by the end of the year,” Abdul Hassan, founder & CEO of Mono, told TechCabal. The startup expects to achieve profitability by scaling the adoption of its open finance tools. “We have more partnerships like this in the pipeline.”

The startup, like its competitors, has been expanding its focus from providing lenders with open banking APIs to servicing a wide range of fintechs to increase revenue. 

Before partnering with Mastercard, it had partnered with Flutterwave, one of Nigeria’s largest payment providers, to enable merchants to receive payment through the account-to-account (A2A) option which it calls DirectPay Pay with Bank. According to Mono, this payment option has facilitated payment transactions exceeding ₦5 billion since it launched in 2022. Mono can expect to facilitate even more volume as the Mastercard Payment Gateway System services numerous merchants across several African countries, including Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria, where Mono currently operates.

On the other hand, this partnership is advantageous for Mastercard, as it has been finding new ways to digitalise spending. Through partnerships with payment providers, Mastercard has been exploring non-card payments in Africa for years: mobile money wallets, contactless payments, and QR payments. Around 2020,  over 1 million merchant locations across Africa were accepting  Mastercard QR payments.

”In three years, cards will mostly be used for offline payments,” said Hassan, who claims that Mono has connected more than 3 million financial accounts across Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. He predicts that this account-to-account payment method will see even quicker adoption, especially in Nigeria, where  QR payments and contactless payments have slower uptake rates.

This optimistic outlook might be a breath of fresh air for established card networks like Mastercard and Visa, whose deployment of account-to-account payment in developed markets like the US and UK has met reluctance from users. Experts believe the consumer market in those regions favours the familiarity and ease of card payments for everyday spending and argue that users might require more incentives to adopt A2A options.

In contrast, in Nigeria, a lot of merchants are enabling the pay with bank option, which is repeatedly used even when there are USSD and card options, according to Hassan. “I think it is because of the ease and perceived security.”  Also, the settlement is instant and much faster than cards.

Hassan reasons that the success of this payment method for Mastercard spells good tidings for Mono’s dream to become a household name. 

“We currently have a web-based app that allows users to see how many fintech apps their bank details are linked to.” The four-year-old startup hopes to gain familiarity with the larger consumer market and eventually launch the web app as a mobile app with added features.

Since its launch in 2020, Bamboo has announced $19.4 million in VC investment from investors like Greycroft, Tiger Global, Motley Fool Ventures, Saison Capital, Chrysalis Capital, and Y-Combinator’s Michael Seibel.

The co-founders are Richmond Bassey and Yanmo Omorogbe.  Bassey steers the ship as CEO, focusing on the long-term vision and strategic direction of the company. Richmond Bassey CEO. His direct reports aside from Omorogbe,  chief operating officer (COO),  include George Imoedemhe, head of product & engineering, and  Dubai-based Oleg Medvedev who is head of design.  Meanwhile, Omorogbe, chief operating officer (COO), is in charge of the company’s day-to-day operations.

All team leads: Damilola Akinyemi (head of finance), Ebi Wanapere (head of platform), Jennnifer Abah (head of customer experience), Misan Omagbitse (head of people), and Oluwakemi Idowu (head of legal) report directly to her.

This TechCabal Org Chart details Bamboo’s leadership.

If you would like to showcase the leadership structure of your startup in this way, contact the author of this article: ngozi@bigcabal.com.

The revocation took effect on December 6, 2023. 

Cellulant is therefore leaving the consumer-facing mobile money market to focus on providing payment services to businesses. The company told TechCabal via email that it decided to exit the mobile money space and focus on providing solutions “as far back as 2021”. This informed its procurement of a Payment Solution Service Provider (PSSP) licence from the CBN, which has been issued and is now operational. 

“The regulator did not revoke the licence as a result of infractions or any breach. The CBN succeeded in gazetting this request in December 2023, occasioned by the time it took them to conclude the process of revoking the mobile money license as requested by Cellulant,” Cellulant said in the email.

The CBN in the aforementioned letter addressed to Cellulant said it was revoking Cellulant’s mobile money licence, “following [Cellulant’s] decision to discontinue operating the licence”.

The company, which raised $54.5 million in three funding rounds between 2014 and 2018 from investors like The Rise Fund, has hit a rough patch lately. After an out-of-court settlement of a long-drawn leadership tussle with its former co-founder, Bolaji Akinboro, Cellulant has struggled to stabilise its operations and raise new funding.

In 2023, Cellulant saw the need to restructure its business, including reducing the headcount by 20% in August. In December, the company’s CEO Akshay Grover, stepped down citing personal reasons. That exit also led to another round of layoffs in the company and the announcement of an acting CEO. 

The new licences will put Kuda in direct competition with startups like LemFi and Nala, which style themselves as global neobanks for Africans in the diaspora. 

This is not Kuda’s first crack at the remittance market. In 2022, it secured a payment licence in the United Kingdom and rolled out a subscription remittance offering with a flat fee of £3 and a transfer limit of £10,000. One person with knowledge of the company’s business told TechCabal that the product has now been discontinued, theorising that the market was not ready for a subscription-based remittance offering.

It makes it likely that when the neobank rolls out its offerings in Canada and Tanzania, it will not go the way of subscriptions. 

The remittance market has become more attractive to investors as more Nigerians and Africans seek greener pastures abroad. In 2022, Nigeria was Canada’s fourth largest immigration source country, welcoming 22,085 Nigerian immigrants, making 5.06% of Canada’s total number of permanent residents. At the same time, over 100,000 Canadians of Nigerian descent call Canada home. In 2022, remittance inflows into Africa totaled an estimated $100.1 billion, accounting for 3.4% of Africa’s GDP. 

By focusing on markets like Canada and the UK where the number of Nigerian migrants continues to grow, Kuda has an opportunity to grow its foreign exchange revenue at a time when the FX rates are decimating the profits of startups. 

The decision affected at least two executives, people familiar with the matter said.

“Our core focus has always been our African markets, where as you know, we have some of the largest consumer products on the market,” Ham Serunjogi told TechCabal via email. “Additionally, with regards to our US operations, we will continue to offer our product as we did in the past and I expect those services to resume soon,” he added.

The fintech company, backed by Jeff Bezos’s Bezos expedition, laid off 15 people and slashed salaries by 25% for its UK and US employees in December 2023 but insisted its business was “doing very well.”

While Chipper told US customers to withdraw their funds urgently, Serunjogi told The Information the suspension had a “very small impact on very few people, relatively speaking.”

“But for context, the US has never been a focus for us – we have offered that product there as an extension of our African services” Serunjogi told TechCabal.

In the past year, four rounds of layoffs at the company have affected several high-profile executives, including Alicia Levine, the Chief Operating Officer and Leon Kiptum, its country director for Kenya. 

Chipper Cash had previously cut the salaries of its U.S. and U.K. staff by 25% but allowed them to work four days per week. 

Before suspending its U.S. operations, Chipper Cash told customers to withdraw funds from their Chipper wallets.

Once valued at over $2 billion, Chipper Cash has faced challenges in the last two years as the global economy slowed and venture capital funding dried up. 

Despite raising $300 million between 2019 and 2021 from investors like Deciens Capital, Ribbit Group, FTX, and Silver Valley Bank, the company began experiencing financial losses. One source mentioned that its monthly burn rate gradually grew to $7 million per month, possibly peaking in May 2021 after the Series C funding round.

*This is a developing story

*Correction: The headline has been edited to reflect that Chipper will respond to comments.

Kenya has approved the operation of 17 new digital credit providers (DCPs), including Autochek – a car loan facility startup – one year after it licensed 32 digital credit providers.  

In a move signalling a crackdown on predatory practices, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) continues to scrutinise applications from digital lenders, issuing licenses to just 51 lenders, so far. This stringent vetting process follows the need to address borrower concerns, such as unethical loan collection techniques.

In 2022, through the CBK, Kenya purged all digital lending companies for operating without licences. The directive implied that these companies, which had grown to hundreds, had to cease operations immediately and apply for a permit from the CBK. The licences were structured around a new law, the CBK (Digital Credit Providers) Regulations, 2022, which introduced data protection laws to safeguard borrowers from illegally using their personal information.

Before these changes, Kenya had hundreds of unlicensed digital lending platforms. However, concerns about high-interest rates, personal data abuses, and unethical debt collection practices compelled the government to act. “The licensing and oversight of digital credit providers (DCPs) was precipitated by concerns raised by the public about the predatory practices of the unregulated DCPs,” the CBK said in a statement.

After the law was passed, only a few digital lenders could provide their services to Kenyans, including Branch, which operates in other markets such as Nigeria and Tanzania, and Tala. Then, over 480 digital lenders applied for the license, indicating the lucrative nature of the online lending business in the country. 

The regulatory change was a response to public outcry over the unchecked practices of digital lenders. These companies charged excessive interest rates, sometimes up to 400% per year, among other unethical business practices. 

Under the new law, the CBK (Digital Credit Providers) Regulations, 2022, all digital credit must register as data controllers and processors with the Office of Data Protection (ODPC). Credit providers must also provide evidence of their source of funds as an anti-money laundering directive.

The Central Bank revoked the licences of those banks for being “inactive, insolvent, failing to render returns, closing shop, or not providing the type of banking services for which they were licensed for more than six months.” The apex bank did not provide specific reasons for each affected bank. 

Two of the most prominent banks affected by the CBN action are Eyowo Microfinance Bank, backed by the fintech Softcom, and Purple Microfinance Bank. 

“Some of the banks believe the CBN wrongfully revoked their license and have been trying to make a case to regain their license, albeit under a different name,” said an NDIC agent who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak on the matter. 

Eyowo has repeatedly said it is engaging the CBN to regain its licence and resume operations. In June 2023, it entered into a short-lived partnership with Providus Bank, which allowed some customers access to their money. 

At least two customers said they were initially able to withdraw their funds from Eyowo after the Providus partnership, but the app became inaccessible weeks later. 

“Every microfinance bank affected by the revocation is undergoing this NDIC process, which is part of the CBN/NDIC procedure to either wind down fully revoked banks or reinstate successful applicants like us,” a highly-placed person at Eyowo said. 

Customers with bigger deposits need to wait it out 

The situation could be a little more complex for customers who had more than ₦200,000—the maximum the NDIC will pay— in their accounts. In some cases, the affected banks are engaging customers and reassuring them of the work being done to ensure they access their deposits.

If the banks cannot make good on their promise, the customers will still have recourse to the NDIC. 

The government-backed insurer will assess the banks’ assets that lost their licenses and sell whatever it can. It will also recover their loans and sell whatever investments those banks have. 

“After liquidating the entity, the NDIC will pay depositors with more than ₦200,000 part or all of their remainder deposits as a “liquidation dividend.”

While some banks are applying to get their licences back, there’s a real risk that they may be unsuccessful.

The NDIC may eventually liquidate the bank’s assets to pay their depositors if they fail to convince the central bank that they are healthy institutions. “Liquidation is often the last resort,” an NDIC official who asked to speak anonymously told TechCabal.

“After assessing the bank’s assets, we often try other measures, such as asking the shareholders to pump money into the bank.” 

In cases where that yields no response, the NDIC often tries to negotiate a takeover by another bank or get someone else to run the bank until things have stabilized.

Firstmonie processed over ₦1.1 trillion in transactions in 2023, more than double the amount handled by Access Bank, Zenith Stanbic IBTC, Union, Ecobank, FCMB, and Fidelity Bank combined.

The Interswitch report only reflects payment activity within its network and excludes information from  Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) which also processes a significant volume of payments.

The report shows that, compared to previous years, Firstmonie was outpaced by five VC-backed fintech companies—Moniepoint, Opay, MFS Africa (Onafriq), and Nomba. Previous Insterswitch reports show that from April 2021 to March 2022, Firstmonie processed the second-highest amount of agency banking payments—₦2 trillion, double what it processed in 2023.

Interswitch declined to comment on the figures.

Between 2021 and 2022, three bank-led agency banking services were in the top 10, but this new report shows them losing momentum and market share to fintech companies like Nomba, which processed ₦1.14 trillion—nearly 2.5 times what it did in 2021-2022.

One factor that may have contributed to the increased market share of agency banking players is the cash crunch in early 2023. As Nigeria grappled with widespread cash scarcity in 2023, traditional banks’ network infrastructure faltered under the weight of increased digital payments, leaving their various payment platforms, including POS agents, teetering. This operational nightmare was a golden opportunity for nimble fintech players whose platforms witnessed a surge in usage, including POS transactions.

The numbers speak for themselves. Paga, a long-time fintech player, processed a staggering ₦147.1 billion in transactions, more than double the ₦68.3 billion it handled through Interswitch’s platform between April 2021 and March  2022. This figure surpasses the transaction volume of the agency banking business of Access Bank, one of Nigeria’s biggest banks.

Industry analysts attribute this shift to several factors. Fintechs are perceived as more agile and adaptable, offering easier agent onboarding, a wider reach through mini POS terminals, and innovative solutions. Additionally, the 2023 cash crunch exposed limitations in traditional banking infrastructure, driving users towards alternative channels like agency banking, which fintechs were quicker to capitalize on.

More than being nimble, these fintechs are also more accessible than bank-led agency banking providers. While Firstmonie still boasts the largest bank-led agent network in Nigeria with over 200,000 agents, which it claims are “spread across 772 out of 774 local government areas in Nigeria,” it has stricter agent requirements that exclude a larger part of the small and medium businesses.

To become a Firstmonie agent, you must have an existing business registered with a corporate body or a current account. This excludes a lot of legitimate small businesses and even individuals who want to make a business of the POS agency by itself. Fintech competitors like Moniepoint and Opay only require means of personal identification.

“Amongst fintech themselves, there is cutthroat competition because this is all they have to survive on,” an agency banking expert told TechCabal. 

“Banks have many other options. They make money from loans, transfers, and more.” However, fintech has to come up with ways to survive or die. Last year saw the exit of agency banking services like Kippa Pay. The Interswitch report shows that the fintech processed only ₦36 million in 2023 before it closed shop due to the decreasing margins in the business. 

It is also plausible that fintech companies like Opay and Moniepoint, which have raised funding, can use VC funds to subsidise their products and services to gain market share. Firstmonie, for instance, reportedly has a higher charge on transactions than fintechs. VC funds also make fintech quicker on their feet than banks. While banks may need to wade through bureaucracy to make capital investments in hardware like the much cheaper mini POSes, fintechs like Nomba and Opay have been aggressively pushing to widen and deepen the reach of their services.

However, there may be a shift in dynamics in favour of the banks shortly, considering how inflation is driving up the cost of POS devices and shrinking margins. Seeing that VC funding is less forthcoming, this fintech may give way to banks that already have sustainable businesses that can feed the growth of their agency banking arm.

In July 2023, Kenya’s Assets Recovery Agency sought court approval to withdraw money laundering charges against the fintech startup, but the judge denied the request, citing the ARA’s failure to provide evidence for dropping the proceedings.

The charge was eventually withdrawn in November 2023, which meant that Flutterwave would regain access to the remaining $3 million of its funds.

“The ARA has officially withdrawn its suit against us, marking an end to the scrutiny of Flutterwave Payments Technology Limited Kenya’s bank accounts,” Flutterwave said in a statement in November 2023. 

The Asset Recovery Agency (ARA) initially froze over $55 million of funds belonging to Flutterwave in 2022 following an allegation that the funds were proceeds of fraud and money laundering. The first case was withdrawn in March 2023, after which Flutterwave recovered the majority of the funds amounting to $52.5 million.

The rest of the funds were not immediately released, as the Asset Recovery Agency (ARA) opposed unfreezing them at the time. In January 2024, High Court Judge Nixon Sifuna, assigned to the case, criticized the ARA for requesting to withdraw a second case.

According to the ARA, it found Flutterwave innocent of any fraud in this case, yet it withdrew it and requested that it continue to hold the funds. “Such a litigation facade or decoy is inappropriate, an abuse of the court process, and an attempt at squandering the scarce judicial time,” Judge Sifuna said.

With the funds in the company’s hands, Flutterwave’s next business move will be seeking a payments and remittance license in Kenya. Unlike other licensed payment companies, Flutterwave is not legally allowed to collect or settle payments in Kenya. It only has partnerships with local and international companies operating in Kenya, including Uber. 

Kenya is one of Flutterwave’s primary markets, alongside Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt. The company has also set up strategic offices in Rwanda, Ghana, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, and Senegal. 

*This is a developing story

Duke had been absent on the company’s Slack channel for months, two ex-employees said. When TechCabal requested comments in December 2023, Duke said he could not “confirm or deny his exit.”

The Kippa cofounder has now confirmed his exit from the company and has begun working on a different venture he declined to share specifics. 

“I am still very involved in Kippa as I have been providing advisory services to [Kennedy]  who is first my brother before my co-founder,” Duke told  TechCabal on a call. 

He remains a shareholder and co-founder in Kippa even though he is currently working on a different business. He also declined to comment on the 2022 exit of Uche Jepthat, the CTO and third cofounder. 

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Uche Jepthat left Kippa in November 2022—two months after the startup announced that it had raised $8.2 million in a second round of funding, per his LinkedIn profile. He has co-founded another business— Earna, which offers benefits and wellness plans to employees.

Moving on from agency banking and Kippa

“In the last quarter of 2023, after [Kennedy and I] decided to exit the agency banking business due to its unprofitability, I handed over the day-to-day operations of Kippa to [Kennedy], ” said Duke. 

Duke coordinated the company’s growth, marketing and strategy teams and led Kippa Pay, the now-divested agency banking business, said two persons who worked with him at the time. 

In October, the Kippa Pay business was shut down, and 40 employees who worked on the product were laid off. 

After closing the agency banking business, Duke and Kennedy Ekezie returned to the drawing board. “We went back to talk to SMEs and large businesses to see what problems they had that we could solve. Two problems stood out for us.”

“One of the problems aligned with my long-term goals and ambitions, and the other aligned with Kennedy’s. So we have decided to solve these problems individually,” Duke told TechCabal.

He declined to share specifics of the problem he’s looking to solve with his new venture.

Kippa’s pivot to edtech 

On Wednesday, TechCabal exclusively reported that Kippa is pivoting to edtech with an AI-powered platform that creates courses and teaches them to learners via messaging apps. 

It’s a creative pivot, considering where the business began.

Two years before starting Kippa, Kennedy and Duke spent a year in Beijing supporting TikTok’s expansion into Africa. Alongside Jephthah Uche, they launched the finance management platform in June 2021 after traveling to Lagos, Uyo, Owerri, and Aba—Nigeria’s bustling commercial centers—to meet small businesses and learn what problems they could solve for them. 

Upon learning that manual reconciliation of business transactions was a major pain point for these businesses, they came up with an app that automates accounting processes and called it Kippa— possibly a wordplay on the word “bookkeeper.” 

They eventually raised about $11.6 million across two rounds from VC firms like Goodwater Capital, Target Global, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital, Crestone VC, VentureSouq, Horizon Partners and Vibe Capital, Entrée Capital, Alter Global and Rally Cap Venture. 

Angel investors across those rounds included Babs Ogundeyi, Kuda CEO; Sriram Krishnan, an investor in Khatabook; Raffael Johnen, Auxmoney CEO; Chris Bouwer; Kyane Kassiri; Edward Suh of Goodwater Capital; and Sajid Rahman also funded the startup.