The acquisition gives the fintech, owned by Stripe, direct control over deposits and lending, areas where small businesses usually face challenges.

The newly formed Paystack Microfinance Bank (Paystack MFB) will start by lending to businesses before gradually offering services to consumers. It will also provide banking-as-a-service (BaaS) products to companies developing financial solutions and treasury tools. 

“After 10 years of building payment infrastructure and going deep, we realised that businesses needed more than just getting paid to grow,” Paystack COO Amandine Lobelle said. “We wanted to leverage the expertise that we have built over the last decade to continue to address some of the pain points that (businesses) have.”

Paystack MFB will operate independently alongside Paystack’s payments arm under the oversight of their US parent company. The two entities will collaborate within regulatory boundaries but maintain separate licences, governance, and product offerings. 

This structure allows Paystack to experiment with deposits and loans without taking on the costs or regulations of a full commercial banking licence.

The acquisition comes after Paystack’s consumer-facing initiatives, including the launch of the Zap payments app, and positions the company to tap into Nigeria’s $32 billion small business financing gap. 

In processing payments for over 300,000 businesses monthly, Paystack now has the data and infrastructure to offer loans, overdrafts, and merchant cash advances using live revenue flows rather than traditional financial statements.

“By having consistently high uptime, and making Paystack MFB the fastest, most dependable way to move money in and out of their account or to access it,” Lobelle said, outlining the strategy to make Paystack the primary bank account for businesses.

This approach sets Paystack apart from competitors. Digital-first banks like Kuda built deposits first, then layered in lending. Paystack starts from the infrastructure layer, using payment data to underwrite loans and optimise risk models. 

It will compete with traditional microfinance banks such as LAPO, Accion, and Baobab, as well as embedded-finance players including Moniepoint, OPay, PalmPay, and Kuda.

Despite the expansion, partnerships with commercial banks like Titan Trust for payment processing remain unchanged. Paystack MFB also operates independently of Brass, another business banking venture backed by Paystack-led investors. 

“Brass has its own team, investors. Just like any other financial services platform in Nigeria, Brass would be able to benefit from the banking-as-a-service services from Paystack MFB, but the two are independent,” Lobelle said.

In April 2025, the Central Bank of Nigeria fined Paystack ₦250 million ($190,000) for operating Zap as a wallet without approval. Regulatory clearance for Zap and now Paystack MFB emphasises the company’s compliance and points to trust from regulators in fintechs that meet standards.

Paystack’s strategy is to leverage its decade-long payments expertise to control more of the financial stack, address the SME funding gap, and build a bank that can scale with Nigeria’s internet economy. 

“By adding Paystack MFB to our family of brands, we’re finding the right balance through combining the rapid innovation of a tech-first platform with the stability of traditional banking,” Lobelle said.

The partnership will introduce new microcredit solutions aimed at serving unbanked and underserved populations across the continent.

With over 100 million customers in sixteen countries across Africa and the Middle East, Orange Money Group facilitated more than €160 billion in transactions in 2024. 

JUMO has disbursed over $8 billion to more than 31 million African customers, matching expertise and a desire to scale with Orange Money Group.

This partnership will enable Orange Money Group to advance its financial inclusion strategy by introducing new microcredit services to its customer value proposition. 

The collaboration with JUMO leverages their data analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities, refined over 10 years to optimise credit allocation, reduce the cost of risk for lending to < 4% and grow sustainable portfolios.

This strategic alliance will also enable the rollout of various credit products across multiple markets from a multitude of funders, creating a new microfinance marketplace for the unbanked in emerging markets, with an initial focus on Francophone Africa. 

JUMO’s leading expertise in asset allocation and credit risk management makes it a key partner for Orange Money Group in Africa. Orange Money Group customers will be eligible to securely request credit through their mobile devices, without needing a bank account or collateral.

JUMO has developed a range of short-term and installment loan products for consumers, merchants and distributors with limited access to these services. They use trained AI algorithms to assess credit risk and facilitate the immediate flow of capital through their partnerships with pan-African banks and development finance institutions.

JUMO’s AI-driven technology for banks and payments ecosystems will provide Orange Money Group the opportunity to introduce real-time app-based and USSD lending to their African customers. The offering is multi-country, multi-product, and multi-funding, with plans to launch in Burkina Faso imminent, to be followed by Mali and Botswana.

This partnership delivers a streamlined user experience that combines financial inclusion with cutting-edge technology. The process is as follows:

• Users access the service via their Orange Money Group wallet
• They request an amount of credit
• JUMO’s AI technology evaluates eligibility based on transactional data
• If validated, the amount is immediately credited to the user’s wallet.
• Repayment is made automatically according to agreed terms.

Aminata Kane, CEO of Orange Money Group said: “After developing transfer and payment services used thousands of times every second, we now aim to support our customers in their personal projects, as well as help them manage everyday emergencies. In recent years, Orange Money has expanded its portfolio with highly accessible small loan offers.”

“By partnering with JUMO, we aim to accelerate this momentum, roll out these services across a wide range of countries, and combine our expertise with their technology to deliver support that is even faster, more transparent, and better tailored to the needs of all our customers”.

Andrew Watkins-Ball, JUMO CEO and founder: “We are proud to have been chosen to partner with Orange and we are excited to connect Orange customers with products from the market-leading banks that run on our platform. 

“This collaboration, built on top of Orange Money Group’s mobile payments and money transfer platforms, will provide customers with great financial choices and allows our bank partners to grow in new markets”.

As financial institutions increasingly seek innovation and agility, strategic alliances between fintech firms and traditional banks drive BaaS adoption.

For instance, in November 2023, Zil Money, a frontrunner in banking-as-a-service (BaaS), unveiled a significant partnership with the innovative Sunrise Bank.

This collaboration aims to revolutionize the fintech landscape by streamlining client onboarding and enabling real-time monitoring, all while maintaining the high standards of risk management and compliance set by Sunrise Bank.

This pivotal alliance is set to reshape the fintech space, introducing unmatched efficiency and upholding top-tier industry benchmarks. These collaborations facilitate enhanced customer experiences through innovative financial products and services.

The surge in such alliances reflects a dynamic shift towards seamless, tech-driven banking solutions, amplifying the Banking-as-a-service (BaaS) market outlook.

API-based Banking-as-a-service (BaaS) segment will exhibit remarkable growth from 2023 to 2032. Leveraging APIs, BaaS facilitates seamless integration of banking functionalities into third-party applications, revolutionizing the way financial services are delivered and accessed.

This innovation enables businesses to offer tailored financial products and services, driving customer engagement and loyalty.

With its open and flexible architecture, API-based BaaS fosters rapid innovation and collaboration, empowering institutions to deliver personalized, on-demand banking experiences, reshaping the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) market demand.

NBFC segment will register a noteworthy CAGR from 2023 to 2032. These entities leverage BaaS to expand their service offerings, providing financial products like loans, investments, and payment solutions.

By harnessing BaaS capabilities, NBFCs enhance their agility and reach, catering to diverse customer needs.

This synergy allows NBFCs to bridge the gap between traditional banking and innovative fintech solutions.

Empowering NBFCs to serve a broader clientele while optimizing operations through flexibility and scalability, further solidifying their contribution to the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) market growth.

Europe Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) industry will showcase a commendable CAGR from 2023 to 2032. BaaS in Europe fosters collaborations between established financial institutions and agile fintech firms, leading to diverse and accessible financial solutions.

This synergy fuels a customer-centric approach, offering tailored products and seamless digital experiences.

With regulatory frameworks promoting innovation, Europe emerges as a hotbed for BaaS, redefining the future of banking by combining innovation, compliance, and customer-centricity in an ever-evolving financial landscape.

[Source] [Featured Image Credit]

The new capability will give Finastra’s bank customers around the world access to cross-border payouts capabilities for small- and medium-sized businesses, and individuals, in multiple currencies and countries.

“This BaaS partnership will allow banks to offer their customers greater choice in how to route cross-border payments, with banks essentially embedding Visa products,” said Barry Rodrigues, EVP Payments Business Unit at Finastra. “We are excited to partner on this proposition with Visa as it provides a very attractive solution for banks seeking to help increase overall customer satisfaction and loyalty through a transparent and cost-effective digital payments option.”

Deploying a custom-built cross-border payment solution in the current environment could be both expensive and time-consuming.

The out-of-the-box processing capability offered by Finastra’s Payments Hub solutions, enabled by Visa Direct and available on premises or in the cloud as SaaS, will enable banks to bypass these complexities with an integration to the Visa network through Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud open development platform.

They will be able to offer quick, low-cost payments for their customers, with great transparency.

“Innovation in cross-border money movement is accelerating at an incredible pace and banks are under pressure to quickly implement and launch programs for their customers that stay ahead of their expectations,” said Ruben Salazar Genovez, SVP, Global Head of Visa Direct. “We are excited to partner with Finastra to support the enablement of their bank customers worldwide with simple access to Visa Direct. Together, we are bringing benefits of our global network to thousands of banks globally, providing a wide range of new and existing case studies to clients.”