Remittances have become one of Africa’s most reliable economic lifelines. In just over a decade, the value of funds sent home by Africans abroad has surged by nearly 80%, reaching $95 billion last year — almost rivaling foreign direct investment. For many African households, these flows are not supplementary; they are essential for education, health care, and daily living.
This growing reliance has opened the door to a fierce contest among fintech companies seeking to simplify how money moves between African communities abroad and their families at home. From Lagos to London to New York, startups are experimenting with digital banking solutions tailored to the diaspora experience.
The Diaspora Opportunity
Millions of Africans now reside in Europe and North America, forming large, connected diaspora communities. For them, sending money home is both a duty and a cultural tie. But traditional remittance services remain expensive and often slow. This gap has created fertile ground for African-born fintechs that understand both the emotional and financial significance of cross-border transfers.
Nigerian Players Take the Lead
Several Nigerian startups are at the forefront of this wave. Companies like Flutterwave, Moniepoint, Kuda, and LemFi have raised significant funding to compete globally. Paga, a Lagos-based payments firm with over a decade of experience in Africa, recently entered the US market through a partnership with Oklahoma’s Regent Bank. By offering dollar checking accounts insured by the FDIC and embedding seamless money transfer tools, Paga hopes to position itself as a financial bridge for Africans living in the US.
What sets companies like Paga apart is not just their ability to provide digital accounts, but their access to Africa’s local payment networks — an edge that many US neobanks cannot replicate.
Policy Winds Could Reshape the Market
The expansion comes at a delicate moment. The US has tightened immigration policies, with new restrictions on African visas and rising deportations. On top of that, a planned 1% remittance tax set to begin in 2026 could reduce flows to Nigeria by an estimated $168 million annually, according to the Center for Global Development.
Despite these headwinds, Africa’s remittance economy shows little sign of slowing down. The resilience of diaspora communities, coupled with fintech innovation, continues to push the sector forward.
Beyond Transfers: A Broader Vision
What began as a race to make money transfers faster and cheaper is evolving into something bigger: building full-fledged digital financial ecosystems for Africans abroad. The vision, as Paga’s CEO Tayo Oviosu puts it, is to create a “Revolut for Africa” — a platform that not only manages money but also connects people, culture, and commerce across borders.
In many ways, the remittance boom is rewriting Africa’s financial story. It is no longer just about aid or foreign investment; it is about Africans abroad sustaining and shaping the economies they left behind, with fintech as the enabler.
