- Citing Africa’s Tightening Startup Funding Climate
Gigbanc, a Nigerian neobank that built a base of more than 150,000 users across multiple countries, is winding down operations, the latest casualty in a startup funding environment that has forced dozens of African tech companies to shut their doors over the past two years.
The company, founded in 2023 by Paul Omoregie Okundaye and Babatope Oni to serve African freelancers and cross-border workers with multi-currency wallets and virtual dollar cards, said the decision reflects broader capital constraints facing early-stage startups on the continent rather than a failure specific to Gigbanc itself.
“This decision reflects the broader funding environment affecting early-stage startups in Africa, a challenge that has been widely documented across the ecosystem,” the company said in a statement.
In a joint letter, co-founders Okundaye and Oni described building “a community of 150,000+ people across multiple countries,” processing more than ₦10 billion in payment volume, and launching products that “helped thousands of people receive their first international payment.”
The company also ran conferences, fellowships and community events for freelancers and gig workers, including its GigConnect series launched in October 2025.
“There are very few moments in a founder’s journey that are as difficult to write as this one,” the founders wrote. “When we started Gigbanc, we weren’t just trying to build another fintech startup; we were trying to solve a problem we had experienced ourselves.”
Gigbanc said it is in acquisition discussions with what it described as “a prominent financial infrastructure firm,” with further details to be shared once the process closes.
The shutdown adds to a growing list of Nigerian startup closures. Startup Graveyard Africa has tracked 53 startup shutdowns across seven African countries between 2013 and 2024, with nearly half based in Nigeria.
In the past 18 months alone, companies including open banking infrastructure firm Okra, ThePeer, HerRyde, Chopnownow, Cova, BuyCoins Pro and Edukoya have all ceased operations, according to industry reports.
Nigeria also slipped from 64th to 66th position in StartupBlink’s 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem Index, a decline analysts attribute to macroeconomic instability and tightening investor sentiment.
Unlike some of the country’s better-funded fintech failures, Okra, for instance, had raised $16.5 million before shutting down, Gigbanc appears to have operated on comparatively modest early-stage capital.
Startup data trackers including Crunchbase and BounceWatch list the company’s disclosed funding at under $300,000 across pre-seed rounds, though the company has not officially confirmed a total raise.
If accurate, that would mean Gigbanc reached six figures of users and billions of naira in processed volume on a fraction of the capital typically associated with startups of similar scale, underscoring, founders and observers say, just how difficult follow-on funding has become for African startups attempting to scale past their earliest stage.
“We are incredibly proud of what we built together and deeply grateful for the 150,000+ users who trusted us with their financial journey,” the founders said, adding that they view the shutdown “as the completion of an important chapter” rather than an end. “The relationships, lessons, community, and impact we’ve created will continue to outlive the company itself.”
