“Can an African OTA become a travel-fintech by owning the payments, installment credit, and cross-border FX stack for its customers?”
Founded 2008 as Nigeria's first online travel agency, Wakanow has evolved from a booking portal into a pan-African travel-tech conglomerate with operations across 14 markets. Its 'Pay Small Small' (PSS) installment product and prepaid Travel Card pushed the company into embedded consumer finance. In 2024 Wakanow spun up a fintech subsidiary, Kalabash54, to own the payments and cross-border FX stack — signaling an ambition to become a travel-fintech, not just a distributor.
Wakanow processes payments through Interswitch and Quickteller.
Wakanow's cards run on Mastercard and Visa.
Wakanow's lending and capital products are provided by Wakanow PSS (in-house).
Wakanow uses Outpayce (Amadeus) B2B Wallet and dLocal for FX and cross-border payouts.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 5 layers in Wakanow's stack: Payments / PSP (Interswitch and Quickteller); Card network (Mastercard and Visa); Lending (Wakanow PSS (in-house) and Pay Small Small (PSS) — travel installments); Unified APIs (dLocal); FX & payouts (Outpayce (Amadeus) B2B Wallet and dLocal).
Wakanow is founded in 2008 and headquartered in Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria.
Wakanow has raised $40M in total.
Wakanow's acquisitions include Oya.com (2024).
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Wakanow 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.