Nigerian fintech Nomba has acquired a licensed Canadian payment service provider and money services business as part of its push to build cross-border payment infrastructure for African businesses engaged in global trade.
According to the company, the acquisition, completed in Q2 2025, provides Nomba with regulatory coverage in Canada, enabling it to move money locally within the country and connect Canadian dollar (CAD) payment flows directly to African markets.
The fintech did not disclose the value of the acquisition or the acquired entity but said it would invest up to $2 million in the acquired company to further strengthen infrastructure and scale operations.
The new infrastructure is designed specifically for business-to-business (B2B) payments, rather than consumer remittances.
“Cross-border trade payments for African businesses are still built on infrastructure that was never designed for speed or transparency,” Yinka Adewale, CEO of Nomba, said. “Owning regulated infrastructure allows us to remove layers of complexity and give businesses predictable, reliable rails they can build on.”
Adewale says the focus on businesses is not designed to exclude individuals but is a bet on where the bigger gap remains. Fintechs have improved the ease of consumer remittances, he notes, adding that cross-border payments continue to remain a challenge.
“Solving this requires different infrastructure: strong regulatory compliance, direct relationships with global correspondent banks, and deep liquidity pools. That’s what Nomba has built, and that’s where we can create the most value. We’re serving the segment where the problem is unsolved and where we have unique capabilities to fix it.”
By acquiring a licensed entity in Canada, Nomba says it can now offer African businesses local CAD accounts held within the country, direct settlement from CAD into naira and other African currencies, near-real-time settlement for cross-border transactions, and reduced reliance on intermediary banks.
The company estimates that its infrastructure can lower foreign exchange and transaction costs by as much as 40–60%. The company’s exclusive focus on business payments in this expansion marks a contrast with its operations in Africa, where it serves both businesses and individual consumers.
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Nomba says the Canada corridor is deliberately focused on trade-related flows, targeting exporters, importers, professional services firms, and multinational suppliers operating between Africa and North America. One of the early users of the new Canada–Africa payment rails is a Nigerian oil and gas services company that bills Canadian counterparties on a recurring basis.
Prior to using Nomba, payments were routed through correspondent banks and reportedly took between three and five business days to settle and had manual reconciliation requirements.
With Nomba’s infrastructure, the company now operates a dedicated CAD account, receives same-day settlement, and can deploy funds immediately for payroll, suppliers, or reinvestment in local operations.
“For businesses, reliability matters more than novelty,” Adewale said. “They want payments to settle when expected and funds to be usable immediately. That’s what owning the rails makes possible.”
The company says it focused its initial transactions on businesses that already had significant business along the Canada-Africa trade route. That initial test saw it process more than $3 million in January 2026, and the company is now opening its infrastructure to more businesses.
The Canadian acquisition forms part of a broader global strategy to establish a regulated payment infrastructure in key international markets supporting African trade. Nomba says it already processes trillions of naira annually across payments, business banking, and cross-border flows in Africa.
In recent years, Canada has become a touchpoint for African startups seeking expansion, a path that Nomba is also taking. Adewale explained that Canada offered the fastest route to building global payment infrastructure, while the United States, where much of Africa’s remittance flows from, offered a more complex regulatory process.
“Canada gave us a cleaner entry point: we acquired regulated infrastructure on the ground, which means we can move money locally within Canada and connect those flows directly to African markets without relying on slow correspondent banking networks,” he shared.
In the meantime, its licence in Canada will anchor partnerships while the company works to secure licences in the United States.
With a Canadian presence secured, it will now turn its eyes to other countries, beginning with the United Arab Emirates and Singapore. In the UAE, it will pursue direct licensing, while in Singapore, it will work on bank sponsorship agreements to open up not just the country itself but the entire Asia-Africa trade corridor.
Last year, the company began operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo after building agent networks in Kinshasa over the previous year. In November 2025, Nomba secured regulatory approval to provide international money transfer services in the DRC, allowing it to expand the range of financial services it offers in the country.
With its Canada expansion now complete, Nomba says it is turning its attention to additional international markets.
“Africa to the rest of the world is next,” Adewale said. “Our focus is building a global-standard business banking infrastructure that allows African companies to operate locally while being structurally ready to trade anywhere.”
