Passpoint is building a fintech layer designed to connect fragmented African payment rails with one another and to major global markets.
The company says its infrastructure reaches more than 35 countries, supports over 30 payment methods and has processed more than 7 million transactions.
Passpoint CEO Kelechi Uchegbulem believes Africa’s businesses should not have to rebuild their financial infrastructure each time they enter a new country.

For an African business seeking to expand across borders, accepting a payment can quickly become far more complicated than making the sale.

A company operating in Kenya may need to accommodate M-Pesa. Enter Nigeria, and bank transfers become critical. Move into Francophone West Africa, and mobile money networks shift again. Start selling into Europe or the United Kingdom, and an entiorely new array of banking rails, currencies, settlement systems and compliance requirements enters the picture.

However, fintech company Passpoint is trying to render that complexity largely invisible.

The financial technology company is building what it describes as a “financial orchestration layer”, that is, a fintech infrastructure that sits above individual payment systems and enables businesses to collect, convert and move money across different countries through a single integration.

Rather than attempting to replace the payment rails already working across Africa, Passpoint aims to connect them. The continent does not lack payment technology; rather it has an abudance of innovative solutions operating in silos.

Kenya, for instance, has built one of the world’s most recognized mobile money ecosystems around M-Pesa. Nigeria boasts a sophisticated instant bank transfer infrastructure. Across West and Central Africa, mobile money has become deeply embedded in everyday commerce.

However, the real friction begins when businesses try to operate between those markets.

Passpoint says its infrastructure now provides access across more than 35 countries and supports over 30 payment methods. The company’s website reports more than seven million transactions processed, while its network connects African markets with Europe and other G20 economies.

Solving the gaps between Africa’s payment systems

Passpoint was founded by Kelechi Uchegbulem alongside Adejuwon Oyebanjo and Chinedu Ojiteli after the founders identified what they believed was a fundamental weakness in Africa’s financial technology landscape.

Individual markets were becoming increasingly sophisticated, but the infrastructure connecting those markets remained fragmented.

Uchegbulem brings more than a decade of experience across African banking and payments, including roles at GTBank, Unified Payment Services, Flutterwave and stablecoin payments company BVNK. His career gave him exposure to banking, traditional payment processing, pan-African fintech and digital assets before the creation of Passpoint.

The company’s approach is based on a relatively simple idea: businesses should not have to negotiate a completely new payments ecosystem every time they cross a border.

“The future of payments is about moving money faster and making cross-border payments feel local and as seamless as a domestic transaction. That’s the infrastructure we’re building at Passpoint. We’re creating a global real-time payments infrastructure that orchestrates fragmented payment rails, local currencies, foreign exchange liquidity so that businesses can move money across borders without having to experience the complexity behind the transaction.”

A business expanding from Nigeria into Kenya, Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire or South Africa can find itself dealing with different payment providers, settlement arrangements, regulatory requirements, currencies and reconciliation systems.

Passpoint’s Unified Payments API is designed to consolidate much of that infrastructure. The platform can present locally relevant payment methods depending on the market, including M-Pesa in Kenya, Orange Money in Côte d’Ivoire and bank transfers in South Africa, while also handling payouts to bank accounts and mobile wallets.

The company also provides acquiring, payouts, treasury and foreign exchange capabilities, alongside compliance and transaction monitoring.

For businesses, the attraction is about reducing the amount of infrastructure they need to build and maintain.

Making African expansion easier

This could become vital as African companies begin thinking beyond individual national markets.

Take for instance, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which has created an ambitious framework for greater movement of goods and services across the continent, but trade cannot become truly frictionless if the financial systems supporting that trade remains disconnected.

The emergence of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, or PAPSS, illustrates how seriously the continent is taking the issue. PAPSS was created to allow businesses and individuals to make cross-border payments in African currencies without repeatedly routing transactions through external hard currencies. In February 2026, Kenya’s Pesalink connected with PAPSS, linking more than 80 Pesalink participants with over 160 participating banks on the PAPSS network.

Passpoint is approaching the wider problem from the commercial infrastructure side.

“Africa is particularly important market for us because the continent’s economic potential is increasingly constrained by the friction between markets. Businesses shouldn’t need to build separate financial infrastructures whenever they enter a new country. Our hope is to make it possible for a business to pay, collect and move money across markets as easily as it does at home.”

The company’s network includes markets such as Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon and the West African CFA franc zone, while extending into Europe, the UK and the United States. Passpoint has also been building infrastructure connecting African businesses with the international markets where they increasingly trade.

Uchegbulem sees that connection between Africa and global markets as central to Passpoint’s next phase.

“Our growth strategy is built around expanding our network of payments and financial infrastructure partners, deepening our presence across key regions across the continent and extending that into the global economy. We’re not building another payments application instead we’re developing linkages of connectivity that allows seamless, instant transactions across ecosystems,” said Uchegbulem.

Why Passpoint is coming to the Africa Blockchain Festival

That infrastructure conversation will form part of Passpoint’s participation at the Africa Blockchain Festival 2026 in Nairobi where the company is a key sponsor.

Taking place from October 15 to 17, the festival is poised to bring together founders, investors, regulators, developers, policymakers and companies working across blockchain, fintech, digital assets and emerging technologies.

For Passpoint, the relevance is focused on using blockchain technology as stablecoins are now becoming part of the discussion around international settlement and the movement of value. This is especially true in markets where traditional cross-border transactions can remain expensive or slow.

“Our participation in the Africa Blockchain Festival is part of a broader mission, focused on Blockchain and other emerging technologies. This is how identity and ownership can move globally. Innovation is only transformative when it connects to the real economy and with more African nations, trade through the AfCFTA, we see an enormous opportunity to combine emerging technologies key payment infrastructure rails, allowing African commerce to be more accessible,” says Uchegbulem.

Africa already has an extraordinary collection of fintech companies, mobile money networks, banks, payment gateways and digital wallets. The next stage may be less about creating another payment option and more about making the infrastructure that already exists work together.

A Kenyan business should be able to sell into Nigeria without becoming an expert in Nigerian payment infrastructure. A Nigerian company entering East Africa should not need an entirely separate technical architecture for every market. And an African fintech expanding into Europe should not have to rebuild its financial stack from the ground up.

Passpoint wants to become the layer underneath those transactions. For Uchegbulem, the larger argument is that financial infrastructure should stop defining the boundaries of African companies.

“Ultimately, Africa shouldn’t have to adapt its ambitions to the limitations of financial infrastructure. We should build infrastructure that adapts to the ambition of African businesses, and connects them seamlessly to the rest of the world.”

If Africa’s next generation of businesses is going to operate across the continent rather than within individual national markets, making borders less visible at the payment layer could become just as important as making payments themselves faster.