We spoke to both founders about what payroll reveals about the problem Bujeti is actually solving, and what it takes to build a Finance Control Centre from scratch on a continent where the infrastructure is still catching up.

Payroll feels like an obvious category for a platform like Bujeti. Why did it take until now?

Arouko: Nothing about building this has been obvious from the inside. When we started, the most pressing thing was giving businesses visibility and control over spending: cards, budgets, approvals. That was the hole. We filled it.

Then it became clear that payments were broken: vendors being paid via WhatsApp instructions, no audit trail, no approval workflow. We built that. Then tax became urgent, especially with everything happening with FIRS and the 2025 Tax Act. We built the Tax Vault. Each product has come because we watched businesses hit a specific wall.

Payroll was always on the roadmap. But we were deliberate about sequencing. We did not want to bolt payroll on as a feature. We wanted it to be native to the platform, where it connects hiring decisions to budgets, payroll to reconciliation, deductions to the Tax Vault. That takes time to build properly.

Chiba: There is also the trust question. Payroll is the most sensitive financial operation a business runs. If your expense management tool has a bug, you fix it and move on. If your payroll has a bug on the last working day of the month, you have a people crisis, not just a finance problem. We had to be certain before we launched this publicly.

You use the phrase “Finance Control Centre” constantly. What does it actually mean in practice?

Arouko: Most businesses experience their finances as a collection of disconnected events. Money comes in. Money goes out. HR runs payroll. Finance reconciles it afterwards. Someone uses a card. Someone else uploads the receipt three weeks later. The result is that nobody has a real-time picture of what is happening financially, and by the time they do, it is too late to make a different decision.

A Finance Control Centre means every financial event: every card transaction, every vendor payment, salary disbursement, or tax remittance happens inside one system, under one governance structure, with one audit trail. Control is not retrospective.

It is structural. You cannot accidentally overspend a budget because the system will not let you. You cannot run payroll without an approval because the workflow requires it. You cannot forget to separate PAYE because it is ring-fenced the moment the deduction is calculated.

Chiba: The analogy we use internally is a cockpit. A pilot does not land a plane by remembering what all the instruments said two hours ago. They have a dashboard where everything is visible in real time, and the controls are right there. That is what we are building for finance teams. Not a better spreadsheet. A cockpit.

The reconciliation problem keeps coming up in how you describe payroll. Is that really the central issue?

Arouko: It is the most visible cost, but it is not the only one. The real issue is that when payroll runs across disconnected systems, an HR tool here, a bank portal there, a spreadsheet in the middle, finance loses three things simultaneously: time, visibility, and control.

The time loss is the reconciliation. Two, three days every month, just to close the books on something that should have been automatic.

The visibility loss is that finance does not see the full payroll picture before disbursement, they see a total, not the detail needed to catch an error.

The control loss is the approval chain: an email to a COO who approves without budget context, payments made before anyone in finance has confirmed the numbers are correct.

Bujeti restores all three at once. Reconciliation is automatic because payroll is already inside the platform where the budgets and financial reports live. Visibility is real-time, finance sees the full breakdown, by employee, by department, by deduction, before anything moves. And control is structural, the approval workflow is built in, with budget enforcement, so payroll cannot run without finance sign-off.

Chiba: I want to add something here, because I think it is important. We are not saying HR should not be involved in payroll. HR should absolutely manage employee data, new hires, salary changes, leave deductions, all of it. What we are saying is that the financial control layer, approvals, budget checks, disbursement, reconciliation, belongs inside the finance system. Those are different functions, and they should have different ownership. Bujeti gives finance that ownership without taking anything away from HR.

Tell me about the Hiring Planner. It feels like it starts further upstream than most payroll products.

Chiba: That is exactly the point. Most payroll tools process decisions that have already been made. You hired someone, now let’s run their salary. We think that is too late.

The financial consequence of a hiring decision, the monthly cost, the annual impact, the budget variance, should be visible before the decision is made. That is what the Hiring Planner does.

You are considering a senior engineer. You put the role into the Hiring Planner. It shows you the exact monthly payroll cost, what that does to the department budget annually, and whether you have variance to absorb it. You make the hiring decision with the financial consequence already in the room.

Arouko: This is the thing about being a Finance Control Centre that I think people underestimate. Control is not just about what happens when money moves. It is about what happens before. The Hiring Planner is control before the cost exists. That is genuinely new for most African businesses, and it matters enormously for managing cash flow in environments where runway is real and naira volatility is constant.

Nigeria’s 2025 Tax Act has been a recurring theme in Bujeti’s product launches this year. How much of payroll is a response to that specifically?

Arouko: It accelerated the urgency, but it did not create the need. Payroll tax compliance in Nigeria, PAYE, pension, NHF, has always been complex. Multi-state routing alone is a problem most finance teams have been solving manually for years. What the Tax Act did was remove the margin for error. The penalties are steeper. The audit visibility is higher. The tolerance for “we’ll fix it next month” has essentially gone.

You have been compared to Brex and Ramp in the US, and Capital One’s acquisition of Brex has come up in coverage of Bujeti. How do you think about that comparison?

Arouko: Honestly, it validates the category more than it validates us specifically. What Capital One paid for was the insight that the software governing how businesses control their finances is worth more than the banking infrastructure underneath it. We have believed that since 2022. The acquisition is proof that the market agrees.

The African context is different in important ways. The ecosystem is less mature. The regulatory landscape shifts faster. The infrastructure we build on is less reliable. We have said openly that we are building on top of an immature ecosystem.And that is not a complaint, it is a description of the work. Building for African complexity makes the product better for emerging markets everywhere.

Chiba: The businesses we serve are also different from Brex’s early customers. Brex started with Silicon Valley startups with dollar accounts and Stripe payments. We are building for companies managing naira payroll across multiple states, doing cross-border payments to Kenya while navigating FIRS and the 2025 Tax Act, and trying to get their first institutional loan with three years of structured financial records as their only collateral. The complexity is real. The opportunity is larger.

Only 15% of African enterprises currently use online accounting tools. How do you close that gap?

Chiba: Distribution is not just a sales problem. It is a trust and education problem. Most businesses are not on spreadsheets because they are resistant to software; they are on spreadsheets because nobody has shown them a system they trust to run payroll on payday without breaking. That is why we offer a test run before going live. Run your payroll through Bujeti in parallel with your current system. Compare the outputs. When you are confident—and most companies are confident within 72 hours of setup,  you switch. The first two payroll cycles are free. We absorb the risk of the transition.

Arouko: The SMEDAN partnership and the PreCEFI partnership are also part of this. We are not waiting for businesses to find us. We are going to where they are: through the government relationships, through business hubs like the Premia Business Network, through the finance affiliate programme. Every accountant who brings a client onto Bujeti is a distribution partner. Every client who experiences automatic reconciliation for the first time is an advocate.

What does Bujeti look like in five years?

Arouko: I want every ambitious African business, whether it has ten employees or five hundred, to run its finances on Bujeti. Not because we have locked them in, but because the alternative is going backwards. Going back to spreadsheets and WhatsApp approvals and manual reconciliation after you have experienced a system where the books close them. Nobody does that voluntarily.

Chiba: The product will keep growing. Payroll is not the end of the platform. But the frame stays constant: a Finance Control Centre that gives African businesses the toolkit and intelligence to operate with a CFO in the room, regardless of their size or stage. That is what we are building. We are a long way from done.

Bujeti Payroll is available now. Existing users can access it from their dashboard. New businesses can sign up or book a demo at bujeti.com. First two payroll cycles are free.

The post “The Books Should Close Themselves”: Bujeti’s Founders on Payroll Launch and What African Businesses Have Been Getting Wrong appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

That’s like trying to fly a plane with the wings bought in Ghana, the engine in Nigeria, and the fuel tanks left somewhere in Morocco. It’s a miracle the thing doesn’t fall out of the sky before take-off.

But then, these inefficiencies are expensive. With Africa operating with 41 active currencies, cross-border payments that still take two to five days, and fees that can hit 3–10%, businesses waste cash and time they can’t afford to lose. 

In a phase where African fintech revenues are projected to hit $30 billion by 2025, the majority of that story has been about consumers sending money home, not enterprises figuring out how to scale sustainably.

That’s the problem Bujeti has stepped into—a financial operating system that dares to stitch together the continent’s fragmented finance. “I usually use the analogy of buying cheap shoes,” says Cossi Achille Arouko, co-founder and CEO of Bujeti. “You can buy ten cheap shoes for 1,000 Naira each, and they will not last. Or you spend N10,000 on one good pair that lasts for years. It’s the same mentality we are applying to finance.”

A Rare YC Bet in Africa

Bujeti’s journey is unusual. When Y Combinator scaled back its African exposure between 2023 and 2024, pulling back from the flood of consumer-facing apps that had defined its bets—it still picked Bujeti. That was rare air. Out of more than 5,200 African startups (nearly half in fintech), only a handful convinced YC they had the DNA to survive.

Arouko believes his own background played a role. Before founding Bujeti, he worked at Paystack, one of Africa’s biggest fintech success stories. “We applied before in 2017 with my former co-founder,” he recalls. “We actually got interviewed by Michael [Seibel] himself. I guess having prior interaction with them, working at one of their most successful stories, having the backing and the track record that goes with it… it just made sense. But again, you don’t really know what makes them choose you. The only thing you know is they believe you can do it. And obviously a bit of craziness to try to do something like this in Africa.”

From Consumer Payments to Enterprise Finance

If Africa’s first fintech wave was about consumers, think mobile money, wallets, and peer-to-peer transfers, the next wave may well belong to enterprise. B2B fintech, including spend management, payroll, and cross-border finance, is now growing at 13–15% annually in markets like Nigeria, Ghana, and Egypt.

Bujeti started as a B2C idea, but quickly pivoted. “When I was pitching this to some friends back in Lagos, some of them just said, ‘Yeah, this is nice, but my company actually needs this,’” Arouko explains. “We looked around and realised there is nobody really trying to solve these problems for African businesses. So we over-rely on solutions from outside of the continent, and pay for those solutions even though they don’t fit our realities. That creates fragmentation.”

What Bujeti is building is closer to a fractional CFO in your pocket: one platform where payroll, spend management, taxes, compliance, and cross-border payments live side by side.

AI as Co-Pilot

The buzzword here is AI—but for Bujeti, it’s not hype. It’s practical. “We want to bring that fractional CFO into your palm or on your computer,” Arouko says. “By default, you will have a virtual finance team that will take care of everything you need to do. One might take care of your taxes, one your accounting, one your payments—all working in synergy.”

He gives an interesting example: “Imagine you want to make a payment to someone you’ve never paid before, or you don’t know their record. As soon as you want to make that payment, the AI will tell you: this company is a fraudster, or this transaction puts you at risk. Or imagine your vendor reduced prices two weeks ago, and you didn’t notice. The AI will tell you to call them to negotiate. That’s money saved instantly.”

It’s not about replacing accountants, he stresses, but about equipping companies too small to hire ten people with a virtual team they can afford.

Building Beyond Borders

Cross-border finance is another big headache. African companies dream regional, but their finance systems remain stubbornly local. Here Bujeti’s international DNA may give it an edge. Arouko is from Benin Republic, co-founder Samy Chiba from Morocco and France. 

“For me as an engineer, the product is built. The only difference from region to region is currency and regulation,” Arouko says. “So any business that uses Bujeti in Nigeria can deploy it in Côte d’Ivoire or Ghana. Every person in those countries will use the same software. If the boss clicks ‘A’ in Lagos, it’s ‘A’ in Accra. No calls, no shouting. It’s already there.”

Why Competitors Can’t Just Copy

The fintech space is crowded. But Bujeti’s moat, Chiba argues, lies in focus. “Automating business processes is the next big move,” he says. “Nothing prevents others from trying, but the most important thing is to understand business needs and position yourself in the value chain. Banks should be focused on moving money. We build on top of that. Trying to do everything is not the way.”

This emphasis on collaboration over competition is unusual in a market where startups usually fight for the same ground.

The Hardest Lesson

But if there’s one surprise the founders faced, it was how resistant people are to change. “You might have the best idea, but people still resist it,” Arouko admits. “Some saw us as a neobank. Asking them to pay to use Bujeti was a no. That’s why we started Bujeti Academy—to teach people what it means to manage your business the right way. In Africa, you can’t just charge from day one. You have to show value first.”

The Future They See

Project forward 10 years and the vision is commendable and resilient. “I want it to be possible for any young kid in Africa to say, I want to start a business, and everything they need—payments, taxes, payroll, budget, compliance—is already on one platform,” Arouko says. “All they should worry about is growth.”

Chiba explained that bigger picture further: “Our mission is not just about financial management. It’s about growth. If companies can grow, their regions can grow, and the whole continent can grow. Where you see frictions, you lose money, time, opportunities. Our role is to remove those frictions.”

In that vision, Bujeti could do for African enterprises what mobile money once did for consumers, bringing forth an economic wave. And if the statistics hold, it won’t just be about one startup’s success, but about bolstering how Africa’s $30 billion fintech narrative gets written in the years ahead.

The post How Bujeti is Building the Financial Control Centre for African Businesses appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Bujeti also received funding from Entrée Capital, Voltron Capital, Unpopular VC, Kima Ventures, Arash Ferdowsi – Dropbox Co-founder; Alan Rutledge, Tristan Walker of Heirloom VC, and Mono CEO Abdul Hassan.

The fintech company, founded in April 2022, aims to enhance expense management, offering a dynamic work environment for individuals passionate about making a meaningful impact. Bujeti values transparency, innovation, customer focus, excellence, and integrity, with a mission to empower businesses through its comprehensive expense management platform.

The company targets various sectors, including healthcare, logistics, agriculture, and construction, facilitating the issuance of corporate cards to streamline spending processes. The recent funding will support Bujeti’s growth, market expansion, and the introduction of credit lines for SMBs, along with new products tailored for enterprises.

Cossi Achille Arouko, CEO, and Samy Chiba, COO, lead the two-year-old fintech, leveraging their expertise from previous roles at Paystack and Ariane Space, respectively. Originally conceived as a B2C platform, Bujeti took on serving businesses, aiming to address the challenge of expense management.

Bujeti allows African companies to issue cards to employees, maintaining control over spending. The platform has onboarded nearly 1,000 businesses across the continent in the last eight weeks, including SMBs and startups like Mono, Spleet, and Eden Life. The company aims to reach ₦200 million (~$200,000) in processed transactions soon.

Bujeti’s competitors in the African market include Duplo, Flex Finance, Allawee, and Boya. The platform differentiates itself by offering both expense management and corporate cards functionalities with superior automation features and multi-entity management. Bujeti is actively working on introducing a multicurrency feature to facilitate international expansion.

Investors, including Abdul Hassan, are highly confident in Bujeti’s potential to transform how businesses handle their finances, recognising the founders’ capabilities in technical and business aspects.

The post YC-backed Fintech Startup, Bujeti, Raises $2 Million in Seed Funding appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.