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Since the capital rush of the zero-interest rate era of the early 2020s, which saw investors increase their appetite for riskier bets, Africa’s venture capital industry has slowly solved its talent problem. Today, local investors account for nearly 40% of the total funding that African startups receive yearly. Some of this growth has been driven by the rise of venture capital-focused training programmes such as Dream VC, Included VC, and Immerse VC, which have helped professionalise the industry by teaching new VC employees how to operate as venture capitalists and, in some cases, help people secure jobs with VC firms. But while these programmes have focused on VC employment as a whole, none have been dedicated to venture scouting, an entry point that can be part-time, decentralised and help attract more foreign investors to the continent. Benjamin Udokwu, a former founder and consultant, is trying to fix that with Seven24 Ventures, a program designed to teach Africans how to be venture scouts. Venture scouting is the process of finding and evaluating promising early-stage startups on behalf of a venture capital firm (or angel syndicate) before those startups are widely known or formally fundraising. Udokwu became a scout himself after Gopaxy, his retail tech startup, failed in 2019 due to a lack of capital. “I even joined Founder Institute’s very first cohort in Lagos to test the idea better, but it still did not pan out,” he said. That experience led him to co-found Climatr, an environmental and sustainability consultancy, and ultimately discover the access-to-capital challenges faced by other early-stage founders between 2020 and 2021. Udokwu’s scouting began with informal conversations on LinkedIn and evolved into a manual process of finding VCs and cold-messaging them about deals. For this week’s Ask an Investor, I spoke to Udokwu about his motivation for starting Seven24 Ventures, how the scout academy addresses access-to-capital challenges faced by underrepresented founders, the traits of a great scout, and common misconceptions about deal sourcing. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Why did you start Seven24? What gap did you see that you were trying to fill? Back in 2019, there weren’t many people into scouting. Back then, it was like four people doing scouting across Africa, even including North Africa. Scouting wasn’t a mainstream thing. It seemed like we were gatekeepers, and of course, that came with certain privileges. But I’d receive calls regularly asking for advice on how to enter venture scouting. I thought, ‘Why hoard the knowledge?’ The ecosystem is growing. 2019 isn’t 2026. The volume of startups launched every day, every month, is massive. Four people can’t cover Nigeria, let alone West Africa or sub-Saharan Africa. The market is huge. It made sense to disseminate the expertise and experience we’d built, bring in passionate people, and pass the baton—so they can do more than we did in helping underrepresented founders get visibility, access to capital, and funding to grow their businesses. How are scouts typically compensated? There are different models. The model I started with, and still use, does not charge upfront. A founder doesn’t pay me to begin scouting. Instead, we agree that if any introduction I make leads to an investment, I take 5% of that specific check. For example, if a startup is raising $500k and I bring an investor who puts in $100k, I take 5% of that $100k—that’s $5,000. I’m not taking 5% of the entire round—just the portion I sourced. Some scouts or agencies charge upfront—$2,000, $5,000, or sometimes $10,000. I don’t like that model because once you take money upfront, you’re under pressure to “deliver” an investment even though you don’t control the final decision. If none of the VCs invest, it can damage your reputation. My approach protects reputation: no upfront fee. I get you access. If it results in investment, you pay. I’ve personally onboarded and introduced over 150 startups to VCs through my network. What are you optimising for with Seven24? Two things: more deals and better deals. More deals in the sense that VCs can have a more robust pipeline to evaluate before concluding whether there’s quality in the ecosystem. And better deals, because the issue is often not deal scarcity—it’s visibility to great deals. I spoke with a VC firm last year. Their plan was to invest in, say, 10 deals, but they ended up doing four because they felt they didn’t have access to quality opportunities. My conviction is: the deals exist. Many founders are building amazing things, and a lot of prominent VC firms don’t know about them. They go for the usual suspects—people who are already visible on major platforms—but many underrepresented startups aren’t seen. What we’re optimising for is access to quality, underrepresented deals. If we train 10–15 quality scouts across markets—say South Africa as an example—they can plug into local ecosystems and spotlight founders that would otherwise be overlooked. VC firms benefit from a stronger pipeline and are more likely to meet their annual investment targets. It’s a win-win: more founders get funded, and VCs have a better, more robust deal pipeline. What makes a great Seven24 scout? First is market curiosity. Great scouts are endlessly curious about industries, trends, and market behaviour within their ecosystems. Curiosity helps you spot early signals that other people miss. You should be able to look at historical data and current trends and understand where the market is tilting so you can position yourself to source the best deals. Second is networking and relationship building. Scouts thrive on trust. Strong relationships with founders, operators, and investors create a steady pipeline of credible opportunities. On the VC side, you need relationships with the right people—GPs when possible, but also analysts and associates who review deals. On the founder side, you need trust and credibility, because founders who trust you will refer you to other strong founders. Third is analytical thinking. Scouts need to quickly filter startups and distinguish real traction from noise. Strong analysis sharpens judgement and reduces wasted
Read MoreThis is Follow the Money, our weekly series that unpacks the earnings, business, and scaling strategies of African fintechs and financial institutions. A new edition drops every Monday. In 2015, Moniepoint, then TeamApt, one of Nigeria’s most prominent fintechs, was building payment infrastructure for banks. By 2025, it was no longer a company in the shadows. It had become one of the most important pipes through which Nigeria’s informal economy moves money. Founded as a back-end technology provider, TeamApt built payment infrastructure for banks before it started courting merchants directly in 2019 as Moniepoint. That year, it crossed 100,000 daily transactions. In 2023, TeamApt rebranded as the name of its flagship product, Moniepoint. According to the company, the move was a testament to the success of Moniepoint and part of a desire to bring the company closer to its customers. By 2025, it processed ₦412 trillion ($297 billion) and handled over 14 billion transactions. Between 2019 and 2025, Moniepoint has moved from being a merchant acquiring company with strong distribution to becoming something closer to a national infrastructure, with payments as the hook, credit as the engine, and product depth as the lock-in. Moniepoint’s early start as a backend provider gave it visibility into transaction flows, failure points, settlement bottlenecks, and how banks break under volume. That knowledge shaped its expansion into Point of Sale (PoS) acquiring, agency banking, and credit. Moniepoint’s 2025 numbers reveal a shift from agency banking. Its payment terminal had become one of the major processors for everyday commerce at supermarkets, restaurants, small retail shops, fuel stations, traders, and informal businesses. Moniepoint did not disclose a full channel breakdown for 2025, but it noted that “8 out of 10 in-person payments in Nigeria are made with Moniepoint.” It also said it processed ₦8 billion ($5.77 million) daily for restaurants, ₦1.7 trillion ($1.23 billion) at bakeries, and ₦90 million ($64,909) at gyms daily. Moniepoint’s transaction volumes show how quickly digital payments are scaling in Nigeria, especially over the last two years. Alongside OPay and PalmPay, the fintech unicorn has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of this growth. According to data from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the country’s central payment gateway processed 9.6 billion transactions worth ₦600 trillion ($432.73 billion) in 2023. One year later, it processed ₦1.07 quadrillion ($771.69 billion) in transaction value. Based on Moniepoint’s 2025 figures, its total transaction value of ₦412 trillion is equal to 38.5% of NIBSS’s full-year 2024 transaction value. How much of ₦412 trillion becomes revenue? Moniepoint processed ₦412 trillion in 2025, but what percentage became revenue? The Revenue Reality Check Visualizing Moniepoint’s ₦412 Trillion Volume TechCabal Estimate Conservative Base Case Aggressive Avg. Transaction Fee 0.30% NPL Rate (Bad Loans) 10% Est. Payment Revenue ₦1.24T Net Interest Income ₦180B Moniepoint Est. Revenue Vs. Big 8 Banks (₦514bn) Bank Benchmark At this rate, Moniepoint isn’t just a fintech; it generates 2.4x the electronic fee revenue of Nigeria’s 8 largest banks combined. Methodology: Payment Revenue = ₦412T Vol × Take Rate. Interest = (₦1T Loans × (1-NPL%)) × 20% APR. Bank Benchmark: ₦514bn (9-month e-fees for Access, GTCO, etc.). Because it is a merchant acquirer and payment processor at scale, Moniepoint’s business model depends on volume rather than high pricing. Transaction fees in payments are usually thin. For instance, Kuda, a Nigerian fintech, charges a merchant service commission of 0.5% per PoS transaction, capped at ₦1,000. For Moniepoint, its estimated transaction fee could sit anywhere between 0.1% and 0.5%, depending on channel mix (PoS, transfers, bills, collections), pricing caps, and incentives. Although a CBN guideline puts the maximum take rate at 1.25%. Using ₦412 trillion as the total transaction value across all its platforms, the estimated gross revenue could look like: · Low case (0.10%): ₦412 trillion × 0.10% = ₦412 billion ($297.14 million) · Mid case (0.30%): ₦412trillionn × 0.30% = ₦1.24 trillion ($894.31 million) · High case (0.50%): ₦412 trillion × 0.30% = ₦2.06 trillion ($1.49 billion) This is not net profit, or even net revenue. It does not take into account costs, incentives, chargebacks, fraud losses, and settlement expenses. In the first nine months of 2025, eight of the country’s biggest banks, including Access Holdings Plc and Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) Plc, earned ₦514.82 billion ($371.29 million) from electronic payment fees. Banks earn a commission on every transfer: ₦10 for transactions below ₦5,000; ₦25 for transfers between ₦5,001 and ₦50,000; and ₦50 for anything above ₦50,000. While Moniepoint earns ₦20 on interbank bank transfers, its estimated revenue from payment was calculated with a blended rate because its 2025 presentation does not break down transaction value by channel. In 2023, the company said it was processing transactions profitably. For its loan income, Moniepoint disbursed over ₦1 trillion ($721.22 million) in 2025. The company claims that its non-performing loans (NPLs), a loan when payments of principal or interest are overdue by 90 days or more, are small. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), NPLs rose to 7% in 2025. Assuming Moniepoint’s NPL ratio is closer to 10% of disbursed loans, that implies roughly ₦900 billion ($649.09 million) of the loan book remained performing. At an annual interest rate of at least 20%, that could translate to around ₦180 billion ($129.82 million) in gross interest income, depending on average outstanding balances and loan tenors. Moniepoint’s growth between 2023 and 2025 Transactions In 2023, Moniepoint processed 5.2 billion transactions and $182 billion in transaction value. It disclosed that 3.3 billion transactions were made on its terminals. It also said $92 billion of its transaction value was bank transfers, and it processed $194 million in airtime and bill payments. Two years later, the company processed over 14 billion transactions and ₦412 trillion in transaction value. According to Moniepoint, it has over one million active terminals and processes ₦10 trillion monthly. Annualised, that is ₦120 trillion. For context, the CBN said total PoS transaction value amounted to ₦223.27 trillion ($161.03 billion)
Read MoreCinetPay, an Ivorian payment processor serving over 25,000 businesses, was reportedly targeted by a cyberattack in September 2025, resulting in financial losses and leaving the company owing customers more than $1 million. “CinetPay has recently been the victim of significant cyber fraud incidents, notably in Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Burkina Faso. Bailiff reports, as well as official complaints filed in each of these countries, attest to the reality of these incidents,” reads an October 3, 2025, letter signed by Daniel Dindji, the company’s chief executive officer. The document, sighted by TechCabal, added, “These events, which had a direct and substantial impact on our cash flow, explain the delays observed in the execution of our commitments.” The fintech, which claims to process over six million transactions monthly, is now in a legal dispute with one of its users, DPay, a Nigerian payment processor, after reportedly failing to remit the funds it processed for DPay from September 2025. CinetPay has yet to respond to repeated requests from TechCabal sent between December 2025 and January 2026. “Merchants depend on the timely settlement of funds to run their operations,” John Schubbe, an operations manager at DPay, speaking on behalf of the company, told TechCabal in a telephone interview in January 2026. “By withholding customer funds for months, this situation has restricted our access to working capital and affected our ability to serve our clients.” DPay and CinetPay agreed in December 2024 to have the Ivorian fintech process payments for DPay in Francophone West Africa. By early August 2025, CinetPay began delaying settlements and reportedly owed DPay CFA 250 million ($455,000), according to documents obtained by TechCabal. By September 2025, CinetPay had acknowledged outstanding obligations of more than CFA 655 million ($1.2 million) and proposed a repayment plan. The documents revealed that DPay issued legal notices in November 2025, but as of the time of filing this report, CinetPay has yet to honour the proposed repayment terms. Another legal notice sent to CinetPay on December 18, 2025, and obtained by TechCabal in January 2026, reads: “CinetPay is hereby required to pay immediately to the requesting party (DPay Limited) […] the sum of 655,209,302.95 FCFA ($1.2 million), representing amounts collected via CinetPay.” Liquidity problems at a payment processor can quickly cascade to the businesses that rely on it, as merchants depend on predictable settlement cycles to access revenue. In CinetPay’s case, some merchants allege that funds remained unsettled for months, limiting their ability to access cash collected on their behalf. CinetPay’s cyberattack occurred in the same month it was licensed as one of a small group of payment fintechs authorised to operate within the West African Monetary Union (WAEMU) by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO). The license, granted to only 30 fintechs, allows holders to process payments across member countries such as Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Togo. The licence also requires a minimum capital of 100 million CFA, robust governance, strong anti-fraud and AML controls, and resilient technical infrastructure, standards designed to prevent operational and security lapses. Given the recency of CinetPay’s licence, the cyberattack tested how effectively these standards were implemented in practice. The cyberattack and inability to settle customer funds occurred 20 days after Senegalese authorities placed CinetPay under investigation for allegedly “facilitating money laundering, organised fraud, and illegal online gambling.” While CinetPay has denied any involvement in illegal activity in Senegal, saying a third-party merchant misused its platform to commit fraud, it remains unclear whether the allegations in the regulatory probe are connected to the cyberattack. Since 2016, CinetPay has provided payment collection and settlement services, enabling businesses to accept mobile money, card, and other online payment methods across five French-speaking West African countries. After opening a merchant account, businesses can accept customer payments online, with CinetPay charging transaction fees that typically range from 2.5% to 3.5%, depending on the country and payment method. When a customer pays a business using CinetPay, the fintech briefly holds the funds in the business’s CinetPay account before sending them to the business’s bank account or mobile money account within two days, after deducting a set of fees that typically range from 1.2% to 2%. CinetPay’s cyber attack In September 2025, CinetPay suffered multiple “cyber fraud incidents” simultaneously in Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Burkina Faso that allowed intruders to withdraw money by exploiting internal limits and sending it to mobile money accounts in these countries, according to the letter from Dindji, which references police reports from the same month. Routing money to many wallets simultaneously, experts have noted, is a ‘textbook laundering tactic,’ allowing fraudsters to evade detection quickly and withdraw cash before security systems can react. CinetPay only detected the breach after large sums across four countries had vanished. By then, customers had begun asking why settlements were no longer arriving. Where it all began Founded by Idriss Monthe and Daniel Dindji in 2016, CinetPay raised $2.4 million in a 2021 seed funding round from 4DX Ventures and Flutterwave, leading the round. The company launched at a time when Francophone African payments were not connected across mobile money schemes and banking rails, and CinetPay offered merchants a single interface to accept them. The fintech also reduced the need to integrate with multiple financial institutions such as Orange Money, MTN MoMo, and Wave. The fintech later expanded beyond checkout to include payment links, school fee collection, and bulk payouts and transfers by creating products that make payment providers important to institutions and platforms. That importance enabled the fintech to build a customer base and status to join an exclusive list of financial institutions that received regulatory approval from the BCEAO ahead of a September 2025 deadline that would have shut it out of the formal cross-border payment system. The approval also allows CinetPay access to the BCEAO’s long-awaited regional instant payment system (PI-SPI), which enables interoperability with all payment methods and allows smaller payment service providers without access to rely on the few fintechs with the licence. As of the time of filing
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