Inside Africa

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12 African Fintech Startups Offering Cross-border Payment Solutions This Year

December 1, 2025

12 African Fintech Startups Offering Cross-border Payment Solutions This Year

It’s funny how sending money across borders feels like a solved problem until you actually try to do it in Africa. This gets worse when you’re trying to receive money from the US or Europe.

You jump between apps, wait for approvals and that haunting “your bank does not support this transaction” message shows up like a ghost.

That frustration is exactly why some of the best African fintech startups offering international payment solutions became breakout successes. They’re not just building clever apps.

They’re fixing broken pipes in the financial system, the behind-the-scenes plumbing that lets businesses get paid, lets freelancers invoice foreign clients or lets families send money home without drama.

And maybe that’s the biggest shift happening right now. Payments used to be a privilege for those who had access to the right banks or the right passports.

Today, whether you’re a remote worker or running a small e-commerce store, there’s probably a fintech designed specifically for how you move money.

This article dives deep into the best African fintech startups offering cross-border payment solutions.

Why cross-border payments matter more than ever

Remittances are the lifeline of many African economies

Every year, Africans in the diaspora send billions of dollars home. What’s wild is how expensive this often is. Some traditional remittance corridors into Africa have had some of the highest global fees for years.

For the average African worker abroad, a 10–12% fee on a single transfer isn’t just inefficient, it’s painful.

Fintechs understood this early. They saw how slow, costly, and opaque money transfers were and stepped in with faster, cheaper alternatives. That shift alone has put more money in the hands of families, students, freelancers, and small businesses.

African businesses are becoming more global

Trade between Africa and the rest of the world, particularly Asia, is booming. Small Nigerian importers now work with Chinese suppliers. Kenyan creatives work with US clients. South African SaaS startups charge customers in dollars or euros.

But the financial rails haven’t always kept up. Many businesses still face:

delayed settlements
complicated banking paperwork
inconsistent FX rates
restrictions on sending money out of certain African countries

In other words, the world expects speed. African businesses have had slow rails.

That’s where fintech comes in. The startups below aren’t just simplifying payments; they’re making global trade more realistic for everyday Africans.

12 African fintech startups offering cross-border payment solutions

1. Klasha

Klasha, based in Lagos, has built its reputation on one simple idea: Africans should be able to pay and be paid internationally using local currencies.

The company focuses heavily on helping African merchants sell globally and enabling African businesses to pay suppliers abroad, especially in China.

What Klasha really cracked is the Africa–Asia trade lane, which is one of the busiest in the world today.

How Klasha makes cross-border payments easier

Klasha offers a suite of products designed to make global transactions feel almost instant:

Pay to China: This feature lets African businesses send naira (or other local currencies) and have their suppliers in China receive funds in minutes. That’s huge for businesses importing goods, especially fast-moving products like fashion items, accessories, or electronics.
Payment links: People across Africa can pay for global products using mobile money, cards, bank transfers, or USSD. The African customer pays in their local method, Klasha handles the FX, and the merchant receives the correct foreign currency.
Klasha Wire: This product is for businesses that need to pay suppliers abroad, in USD, GBP, EUR, CNY, you name it. The process is simple: the business funds in a major currency (or sometimes local currency), and Klasha handles the settlement.
Multi-currency accounts: This solves a big headache for African businesses dealing in multiple countries. You can hold, receive, and spend several currencies in the same dashboard.

Why Klasha stands out

Most fintechs focus on remittances or P2P transfers. Klasha focuses on global trade logistics and payments, which is a major differentiator. It’s helping African SMEs skip the headaches that used to come with paying global suppliers. Faster FX, faster settlement, fewer forms, more business.

2. Onafriq

Onafriq (formerly MFS Africa) isn’t your typical consumer-facing fintech. Think of it more like the railway tracks that other fintech trains run on.

It connects banks, mobile money operators, payment service providers, and global financial institutions across thousands of corridors.

In other words, it’s the infrastructure that allows a Kenyan using M-Pesa to send money to someone in West Africa, or a remittance company in Europe to pay out into African mobile wallets.

This is incredibly complex work, but necessary if Africa is going to build a real continental payment layer.

How Onafriq powers international and intra-African payments

Here’s what makes Onafriq so important:

Interoperability across mobile money and banks: Africa is the world capital of mobile money, but each system used to be locked within its own borders. Onafriq connects them.
APIs for developers and fintechs: Instead of every fintech building its own infrastructure, Onafriq offers plug-and-play APIs that allow others to offer cross-border payments.
FX and compliance handling: Cross-border compliance is no joke, KYC, AML, FX controls. Onafriq streamlines much of this for its partners.

Why Onafriq stands out

Its scale is unmatched. With more than 1,600+ cross-border corridors across the continent, it’s probably the most important payment infrastructure company in Africa today. If Africa is ever going to fully unlock intra-African trade, networks like Onafriq will be at the heart of it.

3. Kora

Kora, originally Korapay, is another name reshaping how money moves across Africa. But instead of targeting individual users, Kora goes after businesses that need programmable payment rails.

Its focus is on reliability, compliance, and giving software teams the tools they need to build with payments.

Key strengths and offerings

Pay-ins: Kora allows businesses to accept payments through bank transfers, cards, or mobile money, depending on the market.
Payouts: Companies can disburse funds to bank accounts and wallets across numerous African countries, which is crucial for payroll, vendor payments, and marketplace settlements.
Card issuance: Kora enables companies to create virtual or physical cards, helping businesses manage spending, issue employee cards, or build new products.
KYC/compliance tools: This is one area many companies struggle with. Kora makes it easier for them to onboard users without violating regulations.

Why Kora matters

Kora is helping African businesses plug into the global economy without dealing with fragmented local banking systems. If you’re building a fintech or marketplace, Kora is one of the cleanest ways to get your payments infrastructure off the ground.

African fintech startups offering cross-border payment solutions

4. MonieWorld by Moniepoint

Moniepoint is one of Africa’s largest digital financial services providers, especially for Nigerian SMEs. Its international arm, MonieWorld, focuses on one thing: helping people abroad send money home quickly and cheaply. This is especially significant because Nigeria remains one of the largest recipients of remittances in Africa.

What MonieWorld does well

Speed: Transfers from the UK to Nigeria frequently arrive in seconds. That alone gives it an edge over traditional MTOs.
No transfer fees: MonieWorld makes its money from FX margins, meaning users often pay less than with older remittance companies.
Security and regulation: Transfers are handled under strict electronic money regulations in the UK, and funds are held in safeguarded accounts.
Multiple payment methods: Users can pay with cards, bank transfers, Apple Pay, or Google Pay, making it straightforward for diaspora workers.

Why MonieWorld stands out

It’s simple, fast, and trustworthy, exactly what you want when sending money home. And because it’s backed by one of Africa’s most respected fintechs, people feel safer using it.

5. Chipper Cash

Chipper Cash is probably one of the most recognizable African fintech brands. It’s popular among young Africans, especially students, freelancers, and people who regularly send money to friends and family across borders.

What Chipper Cash offers

Free or low-cost P2P transfers: This is where Chipper built its reputation, smooth, app-based money transfers with minimal fees.
Virtual cards: These cards are widely used for international online purchases, especially where African cards tend to fail due to restrictions or currency issues.
Merchant tools: Businesses can use Chipper to accept payments in multiple currencies and through various methods.
Multi-country ecosystem: Whether you’re in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, or Nigeria, you can move money with more ease than traditional options allow.

Why Chipper Cash matters

It helped demystify cross-border payments for millions of everyday Africans and gave individuals more control over how they send and spend money internationally.

6. LemFi

Lemfi (formerly Lemonade Finance) didn’t start by trying to be everything. It focused on one type of user. Africans living abroad who needed a clean, reliable way to keep money in different currencies while sending funds home.

That insight sounds obvious today. A Nigerian in Toronto doesn’t just need a Canadian bank account. They need to hold naira and send it cheaply. Maybe tomorrow they’ll need GBP because they’re moving to the UK or dealing with a UK-based business.

What Lemfi offers

Multicurrency accounts: Users can hold and switch between currencies like CAD, GBP, NGN, GHS. No mental gymnastics with FX conversions at every step.
Fast remittances: Payments to Africa move quickly, often in minutes instead of days. This speed is where migrants feel the difference the most.
Local bank integrations: You can send directly to bank accounts and mobile wallets. No strange routing, no extra hoops.

Why Lemfi matters

It treats diaspora Africans as people who live in two financial worlds at the same time. Not just “senders”. Real users with parallel lives in multiple currencies.

7. Geepay

A lot of African creators, independent consultants, and remote workers struggle with one problem. Getting paid internationally. Platforms like PayPal and Payoneer either block accounts, hold transactions, or make withdrawals a headache.

Geepay goes the opposite route. It gives these people dedicated collection accounts in the US or EU. Clients can pay them like they would pay any contractor in New York or Berlin.

What Geepay offers

Virtual USD and EUR accounts: These accounts behave like normal banking details. Your clients don’t need to understand Africa-specific payment quirks.
Smooth withdrawals: Funds can be withdrawn to African bank accounts or mobile money easily. This is where a lot of traditional banking falls apart.
Cards for spending and subscriptions: Think online ads, SaaS tools, creative marketplaces. Tools freelancers need every day without card declines.

Why Geepay matters

It removes the moral judgement that global payment networks sometimes impose on African freelancers. If you’ve ever chased a stuck PayPal payment, you know why this feels liberating.

8. Eversend

Eversend calls itself a financial “super-app”. Sounds buzzy but there’s substance to it. It wants to be where you hold money, exchange it, send it, insure yourself, and even invest.

They began in East Africa and spread carefully. Their big play is giving you tools people in Europe take for granted but optimized for African realities.

What Eversend offers

Multi-currency wallets: Hold and swap between currencies. The rates are usually more transparent than what you get at physical bureaus.
Money transfers: Cross-border P2P. Fast, predictable, and cheaper than bank wires.
Cards for everyday use: Virtual and physical cards for online purchases, subscriptions, and travel.
Insurance and micro-services: Health or travel insurance bundled right inside the app. A big deal for markets where coverage is fragmented.

Why Eversend matters

It has the ambition of a digital bank. Not a narrow transfer tool. If African users are underbanked, Eversend tries to be the bank they never had access to.

9. Grey

Grey used to be Aboki Africa. The premise was simple. If you’re working with foreign clients or platforms, you should have the same banking privileges they get. Without begging a bank manager for special forms. It doesn’t try to be flashy. It just solves painful everyday issues.

What Grey offers

Foreign accounts for individuals: USD, GBP, EUR. These aren’t pseudo wallets. They look and feel like real accounts with IBAN or routing formats.
Direct withdrawals into local banks: You don’t need a chain of middlemen or unverified exchanges.
Currency conversion: Swap between currencies with clarity. Freelancers and remote workers rely on this a lot when invoices arrive in one currency but bills are in another.

Why Grey matters

Grey is about stability. The brand is popular among people who want reliability and minimum drama. And that’s honestly what most professionals want from financial apps.

10. Cellulant (Tingg)

If you’ve ever paid for something digitally in parts of Africa, there’s a chance Cellulant touched that transaction. They’re not a consumer darling like Chipper or Nala. They sit deeper. Inside the pipes.

Tingg is their unified payment platform. It connects banks, telcos, mobile money, card networks, and businesses. Think of it as the conductor in a very noisy orchestra.

What Tingg offers

Merchant payments: Businesses can accept payments from different channels without building separate integrations.
Payment orchestration: Instead of juggling USSD here, bank transfers there, wallet APIs elsewhere, Tingg merges everything into one layer.
Cross-border infrastructure: This is less about “send-to-your-friend” and more about enterprise-grade flows. Retail chains, airlines, utilities.

Why Cellulant matters

It represents infrastructure maturity. The companies that scale in Africa usually need someone like Cellulant behind them handling the messy backend nobody else wants to touch.

11. Nala

Nala started focused on East Africa, then expanded to serve diaspora Africans sending money home. They market heavily on transparency and empathy. You can feel that in how they communicate updates or handle support. There’s also a strong push to give users fairer FX rates and clearer fee breakdowns.

What Nala offers

Low-cost transfers to African countries: They prioritize reliability. Small transfers, small fees. Users get the actual delivered amount upfront.
Consistent user experience: A predictable app flow. No redirect jungles or sudden fee surprises halfway through.
Local bank and wallet integrations: They partner with regional institutions so transfers don’t disappear into limbo.

Why Nala matters

It treats remittances like a relationship, not a commodity. People send money to real loved ones, not empty accounts. That emotional context influences the product.

12. BitPesa

BitPesa was doing crypto-powered payments before the hype waves. They saw Bitcoin not as a speculative asset but as a routing layer to move value faster and cheaper.

They eventually rebranded to AZA Finance but the DNA stayed the same. Infrastructure-level FX and settlement for Africa.

What BitPesa offers

Crypto-backed settlement: Convert money into crypto, move it across borders at high speed, convert back into local currency on the other side.
Business payments and FX: They target importers, exporters, and companies dealing with multi-country operations.
Large-volume capabilities: Unlike consumer apps with tiny limits, BitPesa handles institutional flows and treasury-style operations.

Why BitPesa matters

It taught the continent a practical use of blockchain. Not ideology or speculation. Just a tool to make cross-border transactions less painful.

Key trends driving Africa’s cross-border fintech boom

1. Regulation is evolving faster than before

African regulators are paying more attention to fintech because cross-border movement is sensitive. This is pushing fintechs to improve compliance, partner with banks, and adhere to international standards. Interestingly, that maturity is helping them gain global partnerships more easily.

2. Asia–Africa trade continues to grow

China is Africa’s biggest trading partner. India isn’t far behind. Turkey and the UAE are major trade destinations too. Solutions like Klasha’s Pay to China exist because the need is massive, and still growing. As trade increases, more startups will build niche tools for specific regions or trade flows.

3. Remote work is fueling new payment needs

More Africans work for global companies now. They need platforms that make receiving payments simple and quick. Freelancers especially benefit from fintechs that help them avoid hidden FX fees and slow settlement times.

4. APIs are transforming everything

A decade ago, only big companies could build payment solutions. Now, with fintech APIs, even a small startup can embed cross-border payments into its product. This is pushing innovation forward at a pace Africa has never seen.

Challenges these startups still face

1. Currency volatility

African currencies are unpredictable. Fintechs must manage rapid FX changes and liquidity shortages. For users, this volatility can mean varying rates from one day to the next.

2. Settlement delays in certain corridors

Not all payment partners or mobile money systems operate smoothly. Even the best fintechs occasionally hit bottlenecks because of partner delays.

3. Regulatory hurdles across multiple countries

Africa isn’t homogenous. Every country has different rules for capital controls, foreign exchange, and cross-border transfers. Scaling across Africa is like building a payments company across 54 different regulatory systems.

4. Trust takes time to build

Some users are still cautious about new fintechs, especially where large sums are involved. This is why transparency, security, and speed matter so much; trust is earned transaction by transaction

Conclusion

Cross-border payments are at the heart of Africa’s economic future.

As more Africans build global businesses, send money home from abroad, hire across borders, and engage in international trade, the need for fast and affordable international payments continues to grow.

They’re changing how money moves into, out of, and across Africa, and opening doors that were closed for far too long.

If your business depends on global payments, or you personally send or receive money across borders, now is the perfect time to explore these platforms and see which one matches your needs.

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