Co-founded by Fara Ashiru and David Peterside in 2019, Okra initially began as an API provider that allows the real-time exchange of financial information between customers, fintech applications, and banks. However, as is the current trend among open banking startups, Okra has also begun providing payment APIs to businesses in diverse sectors such as finance, e-commerce, and insurance, among others. Okra is also a payment checkout option on GooglePay.

The company has focused on the Nigerian market for four years, but it is currently working to expand to South Africa and Kenya.

Okra is governed by a board of directors and executively led by Ashiru, who was previously a software developer before the startup was founded, and wears two hats—chief executive officer and chief technical officer. She explained to TechCabal that she currently holds both roles because as an infrastructure provider, “Okra’s business vision and the technology are closely intertwined, and often blurred into each other.” However, she looks forward to having someone else join the team and take on the CEO reins in the near future. 

Ashiru’s co-founder, Peterside left his office as chief operating officer in 2022. Now every executive team lead directly reports to Ashiru. The leads include Bodunrin Akinola (head of people), Gbenga Oyedele (senior financial analyst),  Abiodun Oni (business development lead), Dayo Fasan (customer success lead), and Habib Akinpelu (senior legal counsel).

This TechCabal org chart details the leadership at the startup.

The Nigerian fintech startup helps individuals and businesses gain access to financial data using an API. 

Businesses can use Okra to get customers real-time and historical account balance, carry out Know Your Customer checks, obtain customer transaction history of up to 24 months, and set up links for direct debits.

Okra has a feature for customers too; for connecting personal bank accounts to other fintech apps. The startup says it is connected to all banks in Nigeria and promises “a 99.9% guaranteed uptime.”  

Founded by Fara Ashiru Jituboh and David Peterside, Okra is one among an emerging crop of startups breaking into fintech with a focus on expanding access to financial data. 

These startups are driving the conversation around open banking, heralding a financial services ecosystem where banks open up their trove of customer data and accelerate innovation.

Okra lists Access Bank, Interswitch, uLesson, Carbon, and Autochek as companies who currently use the Okra API.

Since launching in January 2020, the number of requests made to Okra’s API has grown month-on-month by an average of 281%, according to the company. That growth comes on the back of over 20 million transactions and over 5.5 million transaction lines analysed in March 2021 alone. 

Building on this traction, the startup hopes its new injection of funding will help expand its offering across Nigeria. Ashiru, the CEO, says the startup’s quest is to help businesses with digital transformation tools and that they are “in a strong position to continue to build and scale in the African and global API space.”  

The seed funding round was led by Susa Ventures, a venture capital firm based in California which invests in seed-stage startups (their portfolio includes Andela and Robinhood, the investment app). 

The round also marks a first ever investment in an African startup by Accenture, the global consulting firm. TLCom Capital, the only firm to invest in Okra’s $1m round last year, also participated in this seed round as did a trio of angel investors: Rob Solomon (chairman at GoFundMe), Arpan Shah and Hongxia Zhong (both former founding engineers at Robinhood).

Omobola Johnson, Senior Partner at TLcom Capital, praised Ashiru for her “technical depth and expertise” and believes the combination with Peterside puts the startup in a good position to build “Africa’s most stable and robust API infrastructure.” 

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In its 2020 African tech startups funding report, Disrupt Africa identifies 99 fintech companies across 11 countries that raised some form of external funding from investors. 

While the list includes fairly established startups like Flutterwave, the majority are new ventures with some receiving funding barely six months after launching operations in 2020.

Most of these startups have been allowed to build in peace with little inquiry. Building and growing any product in Africa takes time, and fintech is one of the ultimate hard-knock challenges. 

But in 2021, the intensity of scrutiny about these startups and their value proposition to users will increase.

This style of scrutiny is good. Africa’s tech ecosystem is drawing more interest from industry leaders around the world. Paystack’s landmark sale increased consciousness that Africans can build for the world. 

As such, the hunt for new companies with Paystack’s potential requires us to examine the emerging class of fintech companies. We need to understand what they are pitching to immediate users and their potential for global reach.

Out of the list of 99 companies, we present four categories of products that we hope to dive into their backends over the coming months. Each category lists three products to watch and relevant questions to ask.

These are not the absolute best (fintech) startups in Africa at the moment. But aspects of their product and user segment stir curiosity about their purpose and Africa’s fintech trajectory. 

Connector APIs: Okra, Mono, OnePipe  

Fara Jituboh-Ashiru was on practically every fintech Africa panel in 2020 and earned a Forbes cover. 

She’s the CEO and CTO of Okra, the Nigerian startup that helps individuals to connect their bank accounts to lending and banking apps, and serves businesses by facilitating services like Direct Debits. 

The startup lists Access bank, Interswitch, and uLesson among its list of “hundreds” of businesses using their platform. An impressive feat for a startup that has intentionally stayed under the radar. 

Mono and OnePipe are two other startups in the bank connector business. Mono helps businesses access customer accounts for data and payments, while OnePipe focuses on connecting banks to other banks and fintech products.

Like Okra, Mono has also pitched direct debit integration to businesses. One of Mono’s distinct products is helping businesses collect bank statements from customers.

Unlike these two, OnePipe is a strictly business solution; like its name suggests, it wants to build a unified channel for banks and financial institutions to exchange data. Will it become the private sector organisation to make a commercial case for open banking in Nigeria?

Banking: Umba, Eversend, Brass

Monzo, Starling, N26 and Revolut lead the global rise of challenger banks who are valued for building digital-only, modern solutions. In Africa, a few candidates have joined the race.

Umba is seeking to push the envelope in Kenya and Nigeria. It launched with the promise of free bank accounts, free and easy money transfers, cashback on all transactions. 

It sounds similar to the model also being used by another Nigerian digital-only bank, but is free banking sustainable?

Eversend joins the debate from Uganda. It defines itself as a “multi-currency e-wallet” that allows holders to send and receive money to mobile money and bank accounts everywhere. 

Last July, CEO Stone Atwine said his goal is to build a “one-stop-shop for financial services” not just a money transfer service. That demands experimentation with products that intersect across sectors, a challenge Atwine is relishing.

Unlike Eversend, Sola Akindolu’s Brass is not aiming to be a digital bank, yet. The startup is a current account provider and growth partner for Nigerian SMEs. The accounts are backed by First City Monument Bank, a Nigerian bank, and are insured. 

Businesses who sign up with Brass get a Mastercard debit card and receive growth analytics tools to help entrepreneurs with their performance reviews. In Akindolu’s words, Brass’s pitch is to help SMEs “handle their money and make it work for them.” Sounds like the job banks set out to do some years ago. What’s changed? 

Credit infrastructure: CARMA, Pngme, Indicina

Speaking of banks relinquishing roles, a host of fintech startups are taking over the part of the financial sector that deals with retail lending. 

It’s not really a 2020 trend; before CARMA, Pngme and Indicina, there was Migo which has extended its presence to Brazil. But these three companies foretell an increase in credit infrastructure builders in Africa.

CARMA, a Kenya-based startup, unabashedly claims to be “the world’s first credit data marketplace” and is positioning to fill the credit bureau gap in Africa. It joins the race in Nigeria where formal sector credit penetration as a ratio of the adult population in Nigeria was below 5.3% as of 2017.

Pngme and Indicina have similar Africa ambitions for credit: credit modelling, loan origination, KYC, and disbursement. While it’s good to see this burst in competition, I wonder if these companies will get in each other’s way. 

Payment & Money transfer: Chipper Cash, OnePay, ZeePay

Two of the biggest African fintech acquisitions in 2020 involved payments companies. MFS Africa, Beyonic, and Paystack waved the banner of Africa’s maturing payments ecosystem to the world, and we are proud of them.

But payments, as an African problem, will hardly be solved by one or two companies considering the fragmentation of markets. Solutions from various corners of the continent are needed. 

A number of startups are answering the call. 

Chipper Cash launched in 2018 and has extended its peer-to-peer mobile payments services to reach 7 countries. Chipper’s pitch of free transfers has invited questions about how they make money.

Chipper Checkout seems to be the answer to that; they want to follow Paypal’s playbook of using a fee-based merchant-focused product to support cross-border transactions. How has that worked out so far?

In Morocco, OnePay launched in the first quarter of 2020 to enable digital payments for offline and online businesses. Ghana’s ZeePay is setting up as an all-in-one financial services hub; the Interswitch or MFS Africa of Ghana if you like. They are plotting an expansion to South Africa and Rwanda if they can raise $10m.

There we have it: the top 12 startups to pay attention to in 2021. Be sure to check often for extended reviews on each of these and more. What first impressions have they made on you in terms of usefulness and usability? Let us know: alex@bigcabal.com

Okra is an API which allows clients to retrieve real-time financial information from a bank account to any web or mobile app. The startup says its API is for developers but still promises simplicity.

One of its promises is that, “with a few lines of code, you can implement any of our 5 products in a matter of hours.”

It is a bold promise that has now attracted the interest and funding from TLCom Capital. The $1m pre-seed funding represents TLCom Capital’s first investment in fintech space.

Andreata Muforo, a partner at TLCom believes Okra’s technology will provide a platform for more African fintech solutions.

“We are always looking for startups with the potential for high value-generation and Okra’s technology provides the foundation for new fintech solutions in Africa for years to come.

Equally, it was important for us to know that their leadership had the entrepreneur-led focus which is crucial for execution.”

TLCom’s investment is a continuation of activity in Nigeria’s fintech space in the last two years. Many players in the space have focused on payments and lending and have raised millions to match their ambitions.

Although fintech, Okra is a service like Plaid, and will not directly compete with startups like OPay and Carbon. Instead, it will allow businesses and and consumers interact with with their bank accounts using its product.

Okra’s co-founder and COO, David Peterside says their product will help banks and other fintechs.

Fara Ashiru Jituboh, Okra’s CEO/CTO also stated: “Our thesis is simple — financial innovation cannot exist without the proper infrastructure, which is data. Essentially, how far the African fintech sector can grow is intrinsically tied to the success of an infrastructure like Okra and with our core market in Nigeria, we’re opening the door to another level of innovation in Africa’s largest market.” 

“There are approximately 125mn banks accounts in Nigeria alone — but over the course of the next two years, we will see that figure rise exponentially, which presents huge opportunities for growth. Our role within this is to deliver ease, speed and transparency to key players within the fintech space so they can get back to driving our continent forward.”