Nomba is building the financial infrastructure that lets African businesses bank globally
Nigerian fintech Nomba has evolved from a chatbot into a payments platform helping African businesses accept payments, manage finances, and receive international funds at lower costs.
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When Nigerian fintech Nomba launched in 2016, it was not trying to build financial infrastructure for businesses. The company started as Kudi, a chatbot that allowed users to carry out simple financial tasks like transfers, bill payments, and airtime purchases through messaging platforms.<br />
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But founders Yinka Adewale and Pelumi Aboluwarin soon realised that the real opportunity lay in serving businesses. Over time, the company evolved from a simple chatbot into a payments platform serving merchants and eventually rebranded to Nomba in 2022. <br />
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Today, Nomba provides tools that allow businesses to accept payments, manage money, and run financial operations across digital and physical channels. The company serves hundreds of thousands of merchants and processes billions of dollars in transaction volume annually. <br />
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From agency banking to business infrastructure<br />
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Nomba’s early growth came through Nigeria’s agency banking model, in which individuals and small businesses operate as agents, offering financial services such as cash withdrawals, transfers, and bill payments via POS terminals.<br />
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That model allowed the startup to tap into Nigeria’s massive cash economy and reach millions of people who were either underbanked or completely outside the formal financial system.<br />
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But over time, the company shifted its attention toward merchants themselves. Today, Nomba offers POS terminals, payment gateways, business accounts, treasury tools, payroll services, and operational software designed to help businesses manage their finances in one place.<br />
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While Nigeria remains its largest market, Nomba has increasingly looked beyond the country for growth opportunities.<br />
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In 2025, the company began expanding into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Africa’s fourth-most-populous country. Instead of launching with a full banking suite, Nomba chose remittances as its entry point.<br />
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By building a network of physical agents across Kinshasa and other cities, the fintech aims to handle inflows ...
