ALAT by WEMA
“Can a legacy Nigerian bank leverage its digital-native ALAT brand to become the embedded payments and banking infrastructure for Nigerian merchants and developers?”
Founded2016
HQLagos, Nigeria
IndustryFintech / Neobank
The story
Wema Bank, founded 1945 and one of Nigeria's oldest banks, launched ALAT in 2016 as Africa's first fully digital bank. It has since expanded from a consumer neobank into merchant acquiring and embedded payments via ALATPay, and offers developer APIs (merchant payout, collections) through an Azure API Management portal — positioning Wema/ALAT as both a retail neobank and an emerging embedded finance provider in Nigeria.
Last 12 months
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Product timeline
2016
ALAT launched by Wema Bank as Nigeria's first fully digital bank· banking
2022
ALATPay merchant payments platform terms updated, formalizing merchant acquiring product· pivot
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by ALAT by WEMA
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
Same company
ALAT by WEMA was analysed under more than one name on the same domain, so its stack is split across these dossiers. Each was analysed independently and may name providers the others do not.
The stack
3 layers disclosed in ALAT by WEMA’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
ALATPay (self-operated)
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Sponsor bank
in the full report
Accounting gap: significant
2 more providers across 2 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.