“Can a Nigeria-first open finance API become the data and payments backbone for African fintech before regulation arrives?”
Okra was founded in 2019 as Nigeria's first open banking infrastructure player — a 'Plaid for Africa' — providing APIs to connect bank accounts to fintech apps for identity, balance, transactions, income verification and bank-initiated payments. It rapidly attracted Nigerian fintech customers (FairMoney, Chaka, Interswitch, Umba, Paga, dLocal) and ISO 27001/22301/20000 certifications. However, despite raising ~$4.5M from TLcom, Susa and Accenture Ventures, PitchBook now lists Okra as 'Out of Business', reflecting the broader contraction of Nigerian open-banking infrastructure pre-CBN open-banking go-live.
Okra processes payments through Okra Payments (self-operated, bank-initiated payments via open banking).
Okra connects to bank accounts through Okra (self-operated AIS/PIS for Nigeria).
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 3 layers in Okra's stack: Payments / PSP (Okra Payments (self-operated, bank-initiated payments via open banking)); Open banking (Okra (self-operated AIS/PIS for Nigeria)); Transaction enrichment (Okra Transactions (in-house categorization)).
Okra was founded by Fara Ashiru Jituboh and David Peterside and is founded in 2019, headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria.
Okra has raised $4.5M+ in total (latest round: Seed, 2021).
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Okra and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.