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Rare Startup Acquisition In Africa’s Hot Fintech Sector: Nigeria’s OneFi Buys Payment Company Amplify

Rare Startup Acquisition In Africa’s Hot Fintech Sector: Nigeria’s OneFi Buys Payment Company Amplify

OneFi
Chijioke Dozie, Co-Founder & CEO, OneFi

A rare startup acquisition in Africa’s booming fintech sector recently happened. Nigeria’s online lending startup OneFi bought payment company Amplify. While the details of the deal were not disclosed, is major news for Africa’s tech sector.

According to OneFi CEO Chijioke Dozie, OneFi will take over Amplify’s IP, team, and client network of more than 1,000 merchants to which Amplify provides payment processing services.

It’s been a busy period for OneFi. The Nigerian startup secured a $5 million lending facility from Lendable; launched a payment partnership with Visa; as well as becoming one of the first African startups to be given a global credit rating.


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“We’re not a bank but we’re offering more banking services…Customers are now coming to us not just for loans but for cheaper funds transfer, more convenient bill payment, and to know their credit scores,” Dozie told TechCrunch.

OneFi was founded in 2016 by Segun Adeyemi and Maxwell Obi and secured its first seed investment the same year from Pan-African incubator MEST Africa.

And its latest deal is significant. “With the Amplify acquisition and pivot to broad-based online banking services in Nigeria, OneFi sets itself up to maneuver competitively across Africa’s massive fintech space—which has become infinitely more complex (and crowded) since the rise of Kenya’s M-Pesa mobile money product,” TechCrunch reported.

OneFi has plans to expand and is looking at Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, Ghana as well as Egypt and Europe for Diaspora markets.