By 
Wole Ayodele, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fincra, believes Africa’s cross-border payments challenge is rooted less in product innovation and more in infrastructure gaps.
According to him, while numerous platforms offer fast and affordable international transfers, the continent still lacks the regulated financial rails required to support seamless and efficient transactions at scale.
Fincra’s latest milestone—a Payment Service Provider (PSP) licence in Canada—reflects its strategy to address this gap by building regulated infrastructure across key payment corridors.
The licence enables the company to hold funds, initiate transfers, and manage clearing and settlement processes within the Canada–Africa corridor, reducing reliance on intermediary banks that often increase transaction costs and delays.
“Securing a PSP licence in Canada is an important step in our mission to build the rails for an integrated Africa,” Ayodele said, noting that unlocking the continent’s growth potential will require stronger financial infrastructure.
Canada represents a strategic market for Fincra due to its strong trade links and large African diaspora. Trade between Africa and Canada has expanded significantly in recent years, with merchandise exports from Canada to Africa rising by 13 percent between 2019 and 2024, while imports from Africa increased by 109 percent.
Despite this growth, cross-border payments between Africa and North America remain heavily dependent on correspondent banking networks, resulting in slow settlement times and high foreign exchange costs.
“Canada was a deliberate choice,” Ayodele explained. “It has a significant African diaspora, a trusted regulatory framework, and a financial system recognised globally. We wanted to operate on both sides of the corridor in a regulated capacity, rather than relying on intermediaries.”
While the company’s immediate focus is the Africa–Canada corridor, the new licence also positions Fincra for broader expansion across North America, where similar infrastructure challenges persist.
Fincra’s strategy centres on securing licences in key markets and establishing a presence at both ends of payment corridors—an approach it says differentiates it from competitors such as Flutterwave, LemFi, and NALA, which have largely focused on product-layer solutions.
“The crowding in cross-border payments is mostly at the product layer,” Ayodele said. “What remains scarce is regulated infrastructure on both ends of a corridor simultaneously.”
Founded in 2021 by Ayodele and Gideon Orovwiroro, Fincra currently operates across more than 15 African markets and supports transactions in nine currencies. The company has established licences and partnerships in countries including Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, and Kenya, with the Canadian licence marking its most significant regulatory expansion outside the continent.
This development follows a recent partnership with Reap, a global stablecoin-enabled infrastructure provider, aimed at expanding card services between Africa and Asia. The company also secured a Third Party Payments Provider (TPPP) licence in South Africa in 2025.
Looking ahead, Fincra plans to extend its model to other major corridors, including Europe and the United Kingdom, where diaspora remittances and trade flows remain significant but are still processed through fragmented payment systems.
“We are building toward those connections with the same methodology we have applied everywhere: get licensed, get regulated, and build on both ends of the corridor,” Ayodele said.
Fincra’s expansion strategy underscores a broader shift in the payments industry, where control over regulated infrastructure is emerging as a key differentiator in enabling faster, more efficient, and scalable cross-border transactions.
Comments