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In partnership with Lire en Français اقرأ هذا باللغة العربية Happy new month. Quick heads-up: If TC Daily still lands in your spam folder, move it to your Primary inbox so you don’t miss future editions. Let’s dive in. Become smarter about tech and commerce in Francophone Africa, and the policies shaping them. Read previous editions here first and subscribe below. Subscribe CBK approves Nedbank-NCBA deal Nigerian fintech Allawee folds into Paystack Yele Bademosi transitions to chairman at Onboard Namibia launches DigiNam World Wide Web 3 Opportunities M&A South Africa’s Nedbank gets CBK’s approval to acquire 66% of Kenyan lender NCBA Image Source: Tenor Remember the proposed acquisition of Kenyan digital-first bank NCBA by South African tier-1 lender Nedbank that has hogged headlines since the start of the year? We’ve got a big development in that saga. On Monday, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) said it had approved Nedbank’s acquisition of up to 66% of NCBA on August 28, clearing a major regulatory hurdle for the South African lender. The approval follows months of regulatory reviews and a shareholder offer that saw NCBA investors accept Nedbank’s proposal in exchange for cash and Nedbank shares. State of play: The deal isn’t fully closed yet, but once completed, Nedbank will take control of NCBA, giving the South African lender a major foothold in East Africa. Nedbank will become NCBA’s majority owner, while the remaining 34% will stay in public hands. The Kenyan digital-first bank will also retain its brand, local management, and Nairobi headquarters. Explain like I’m new here: In January, Nedbank announced that it wanted to acquire about two-thirds of NCBA through a tender offer, asking existing NCBA shareholders to offer up their shares for sale. Under the proposed deal, shareholders would receive 20% cash and 80% newly issued Nedbank shares. The offer opened in May and closed on July 10, with NCBA shareholders offering 1.32 billion shares, equivalent to 79.9% of NCBA. However, shareholders offered more shares than Nedbank’s 66% target, so the bank had to scale back the allocation to 1.09 billion shares, leaving some shareholders unable to sell their shares to Nedbank. Why does Nedbank want NCBA? NCBA gives Nedbank an established presence across East Africa. It has banking subsidiaries in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, plus a joint venture in Côte d’Ivoire. NCBA reported KES 12.4 billion ($95.7 million) in profit after tax in H1 2026, while its total assets reached KES 739 billion ($5.7 billion). Nedbank also sees the acquisition as a way to get closer to other East African and nearby markets it is eyeing, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. Is this the end of the road? Not yet. CBK’s approval clears a major hurdle, but the deal still has a few other regulatory, banking, and market conduct conditions to meet before it can be completed. Nedbank previously said it expects the deal to finalise by the fourth quarter of 2026. Every business owner needs to watch this. The business questions you Google, answered by experts. Watch for free. Fintech Nigerian fintech Allawee folds into Paystack after 2025 acquisition Image Source: Tenor Customers of Nigerian card-issuing fintech Allawee have until November 30 to move their money, replace their cards, and tell anyone who pays them that their account details are changing, the startup wrote in an email. Allawee has since been folded into Paystack’s operations. What happened? Paystack, the Stripe-backed payments company, acquired Allawee in a 2025 deal that was not publicly announced. Allawee will close its personal and business account services on December 1, 2026; its cards will stop working, and payments sent to its virtual account numbers issued on its platform will fail. Customers will need to withdraw their balances, update their bank details with senders, and replace saved card details on subscriptions before the deadline. Businesses are being directed to Paystack MFB, its parent company’s microfinance bank, while individuals are being directed to Zap, Paystack’s consumer transfer app. Balances, account numbers, transaction history, and verification records will not move across automatically, so customers opening new accounts will start again. Explain like I’m new here: Allawee launched in 2022 as a credit-card lender; it later pivoted to credit-risk software before settling on card infrastructure, enabling other fintechs to issue and manage cards. By May 2025, it was providing services to Nigerian fintechs such as PiggyVest, Nomba, and Carbon, letting them launch cards in weeks instead of months. That infrastructure is likely more valuable to Paystack than Allawee’s consumer accounts. Once Paystack had its own microfinance bank, Allawee’s Providus Bank-backed accounts were competing with products Paystack could offer itself. Acquiring Allawee lets Paystack take the useful infrastructure while moving customers onto the banking products it now controls. Zoom out: Allawee is the second fintech brand Paystack has folded into its operations this year, after absorbing Nigerian business-banking startup Brass in June. Nigeria’s fintech market seems to be moving from “build everything” to “buy the missing pieces.” For customers, that can mean better-connected products, but also the inconvenience of being moved between companies, setups, and platforms whenever these changes happen. A survey for Nigeria’s health logistics buyers. If you’re a Health Logistics Buyer in Nigeria, participate in our report by filling out the survey by 4 September. It takes less than 10 minutes. Fintech Yele Bademosi transitions to Chairman at Nigerian fintech Onboard Global Yele Bademosi, chief executive officer and co-founder of Nestcoin, now chairman at portfolio company Onboard Global. Image Source: Alter Global Yele Bademosi is transitioning from chief executive officer to the chairman’s seat at Onboard Global, the Nigerian stablecoin-based fintech startup that launched in 2022. Onboard lets users spend stablecoins like everyday money, using cards and stablecoin-to-fiat payment accounts. The fintech spun out of Nestcoin, a Web3 banking platform Bademosi co-founded in 2021. Between the lines: On Monday, Bademosi announced that he was stepping down as Onboard’s chief executive officer and taking up a new role as chairman. Paul Oladimeji, who has worked on Onboard’s products and
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For South African startups, getting customers is only half the battle. Even after people start paying for their products, raising enough money to grow can remain difficult. That is the funding gap Mamor Capital Ventures wants to target with its first venture capital fund. The black women-owned and managed firm has raised R300 million ($18.8 million) in the first close of its inaugural fund, with the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), South Africa’s largest asset manager, as its anchor investor. Mamor is still raising towards its R550 million ($34.375 million) target and says it will invest in South African technology companies that already have paying customers. Mamor’s fund points to a bigger problem in South Africa’s startup market, where companies can have paying customers and a working business yet still struggle to find investors willing to fund their next stage of growth. Mamokete Ramathe, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Mamor Capital, revealed that the firm spent more than three years raising the fund and found that many traditional investors, including pension funds and banks, remain cautious about venture capital. Some investors, she said, have mandates or risk limits that make it difficult to invest in early-stage companies. Others still associate venture capital with backing businesses that have not yet proved that their products work. “The fundraising journey reinforced that institutional appetite for venture capital in South Africa is still developing,” Ramathe told TechCabal in an interview on Monday. Mamor is trying to reduce some of that risk by investing in companies that have already shown that customers will pay for their products or services. Ramathe said the firm does not require companies to be profitable before investing. Instead, it looks at whether they have paying customers, can retain them, have a market they can grow into, and have a realistic path to becoming profitable. Southern Africa’s VC market recorded R13.35 billion ($834.4 million) in active investments across 1,325 deals in 2024, but limited exits and follow-on funding remain barriers. That puts Mamor in a market where capital is growing, while some founders still struggle to secure the next round. She explained that a company may have moved beyond an idea and built a business, but still be too small or risky for a bank loan. At the same time, the market still has gaps in follow-on funding, with limited exits and funding for later-stage companies remaining a challenge “There is a significant funding gap for early-stage, post-revenue businesses in South Africa,” Ramathe said. Fuzlin Levy-Hassen, Mamor’s co-founder and chief financial officer (CFO), said the fund will focus on businesses with evidence of genuine demand rather than simply promising future growth. “We are looking for businesses that have moved beyond proving an idea and can show real commercial demand,” Levy-Hassen said. The fund will focus on areas including financial access, digital infrastructure and technology that Mamor believes can expand economic participation by helping more people and businesses access financial services and markets. The PIC’s investment is significant because institutional investors have traditionally been cautious about putting money into venture capital, where returns can take years, and some investments can fail. Leon Smit, the PIC’s acting chief investment officer, said the backing gives the organisation exposure to South Africa’s growing venture capital market while supporting transformation. “Mamor Capital brings together an experienced investment team, a clear strategy, and a strong transformation proposition,” Smit said. The PIC also believes institutional investors can play a bigger role in providing the long-term capital needed to develop South Africa’s venture capital market. There are signs that interest is growing. Ramathe said some institutions that are not yet investing are researching venture capital and looking at ways to participate in parts of the market where the risks are lower. Ketso Gordhan, CEO of the South African Small and Medium Enterprise Fund, which invested through its High Impact Seed Fund of Funds, an early-stage venture capital investment vehicle, said increasing the number of local fund managers able to back technology businesses is important. “Our investment is intended to strengthen the pool of local fund managers with the capability to identify and support promising technology businesses,” noted Gordhan. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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Allawee, a Nigerian card-issuing fintech, will close its business and personal account services on December 1, 2026, after Paystack acquired the company in 2025 in a deal that was not publicly announced, according to emails sent to Allawee customers. In two emails seen by TechCabal, Allawee said its technology now operates within Paystack and told customers that “any payment sent to your Allawee account number from December 1 will fail,” adding that its cards will stop working regardless of the expiry date printed on them. Allawee is the second fintech brand Paystack has acquired and folded into its operations this year, after it folded business banking startup Brass into its microfinance bank in June. Since January, Paystack has also acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank, giving it a banking licence, and restructured under a new holding company. The deals show Paystack, Nigeria’s largest payments processor, assembling the pieces of a financial-services business through acquisitions rather than building each one from scratch. Allawee and Paystack declined to comment on any part of this article. Customers have until November 30 to withdraw their balances, share new bank details with anyone who pays them, and replace saved Allawee card details on subscriptions. “Your money will remain yours,” Allawee said in the email. “It won’t expire or be forfeited, and any remaining balance will stay safely recorded. However, you’ll need to email support@paystackmfb.com to request a manual payout. Because this process may take longer, we strongly recommend withdrawing your balance before the deadline.” Founded in 2022 by Ikenna Enenwali and Oreofe Olurin, Allawee has changed direction twice. It launched as a credit card lender, then became a credit-risk software that other companies could plug into to check whether a borrower was likely to repay, before settling on card infrastructure—the systems banks and fintechs use to issue and run their own cards. By May 2025, it was issuing cards for Piggyvest, Nomba, and Carbon through a dashboard that cut card launches from months to weeks. Enenwali, its co-founder and CEO, told TechCabal at the time that the company wanted to restore fintechs’ confidence in cards after years of Nigerian firms dropping Visa and Mastercard to cut costs. Allawee also offered business accounts through a partnership with Providus Bank, a Nigerian commercial bank, and issued a Mastercard credit card aimed at federal civil servants and members of the National Youth Service Corps, Nigeria’s mandatory one-year service scheme for university graduates. Now, those products are being split between two Paystack businesses. Businesses using Allawee accounts are being directed to Paystack MFB, the microfinance bank created after Paystack acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank in January. Individuals are being directed to Zap, Paystack’s consumer transfer app, according to the emails. Balances, account numbers, transaction history, and verification records will not carry over, so customers have to open new accounts from scratch. The value of Allawee for Paystack likely lies less in its customer accounts than in the card infrastructure it had already built. Enenwali told TechCabal that building a card programme from scratch could take one to two years. For Paystack, once it held its own banking licence, the Providus-backed Allawee accounts were in direct competition with Paystack’s microfinance bank. The same logic ended Brass, the business banking startup a Paystack-led consortium rescued in 2024 and folded into Paystack MFB before July 31 this year. Outside of Paystack, this pattern runs across Nigeria’s fintech sector. The 2020 to 2022 funding boom left Nigerian fintechs building overlapping products, and tighter capital and closer regulatory scrutiny have since pushed the market toward consolidation. Buying a rival is now often cheaper and faster than building the same thing. In January, Flutterwave acquired open banking startup Mono to own the financial data layer beneath the payments it processes, giving it direct account-to-account rails that settle instantly and bypass the fees and failure rates of card networks, plus the identity and bank-verification data it needs to move beyond processing into credit and other financial services. True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders, and individuals rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.
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