Cellulant Nigeria
“Can a pan-African payments gateway extend its merchant base into embedded credit and become the default financial rail for African SMEs?”
Founded2004
HQNairobi, Kenya (Nigeria operations)
FoundersKen Njoroge, Bolaji Akinboro
Total raised$54.5M
Latest roundSeries C, 2018
IndustryInfrastructure / Payments
The story
Founded in 2004 as a mobile banking play, Cellulant evolved into Africa's leading payments infrastructure company, anchored by its Tingg platform — a single-API gateway spanning 200+ payment methods (cards, bank transfers, mobile money) across 24+ African countries. The Nigeria entity operates as a CBN-licensed PPISP. After its $47.5M 2018 Series C, Cellulant expanded from B2B enterprise payments (airlines, telcos, remittances) into SME acceptance via Tingg Checkout / Instore, and is now moving into embedded finance and short-term merchant lending using transaction data for AI-based credit scoring.
Last 12 months
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Product timeline
0
Launched Tingg single-API payment platform for collections, disbursements, reconciliations across 24+ countries.· pivot
0
Announced plans to launch merchant lending in partnership with banks and financial institutions, using AI-based credit scoring.· lending
2004
Cellulant co-founded by Ken Njoroge and Bolaji Akinboro to build mobile banking / payments across Africa.· banking
2012
Cellulant Nigeria powered Nigeria's Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) electronic wallet distributing farm inputs.· pivot
2018
Raised $47.5M Series C led by TPG Growth's Rise Fund — largest fintech round dedicated solely to Africa at the time.· banking
2021
Partnered with MarketForce to power payments across Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda.· banking
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Cellulant Nigeria
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
3 layers disclosed in Cellulant Nigeria’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Lending
in the full report
FX & payouts
in the full report
Accounting gap: none
3 more providers across 2 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.