COOLBUCKS
“Can a Nigerian direct lender scale unsecured consumer credit using alternative data profiling to reach the financially excluded across Africa?”
Founded2018
HQLagos, Nigeria
FoundersIkenna Ajator
IndustryFintech / Lending
The story
CoolBucks is a Nigerian online lender founded in 2018, offering unsecured loans to individuals — payday, public sector, education, and instalment/buy-back loans — with plans to expand across Africa and Europe. Leadership comes from Nigerian banking (RenMoney, UBA, Access Bank) and international consumer credit (Kreditech, GE Money). The company remains a single-market direct lender with no evidence of embedded finance vendor partnerships beyond a referral link to CreditClan.
Last 12 months
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Product timeline
2018
CoolBucks founded in Lagos as an online unsecured lending platform.· lending
2023
Product suite expanded to include payday, public sector, education, and buy-back loans up to ₦5,000,000.· lending
The stack
1 layer disclosed in COOLBUCKS’s embedded-finance stack
Lending
CoolBucks (in-house)Payday LoansInstalment Loans (salary earners)Buy Back LoansPublic Sector LoansEducation LoansSME Loans (unsecured, coming soon)SME Loans (secured, coming soon)
Accounting gap: none