THE MOVE
On 14 April 2025, Moniepoint — the Nigerian payments and digital-banking company that became a Visa-backed unicorn earlier that year — launched MonieWorld, a diaspora-focused financial-services platform operated by its UK subsidiary, Moniepoint GB. The product opened on a single corridor: the United Kingdom to Nigeria, letting UK residents send money to Nigerian bank accounts using a MonieWorld account, a British bank card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, with transactions settling in seconds and no transaction fee (TechCrunch; TechCabal).
Crucially, Moniepoint has been explicit that this is not, in its own framing, a remittance play. 'We're not trying to be a remittance app. We're building a proper immigrant banking platform,' founder and Group CEO Tosin Eniolorunda told TechCrunch. On launch he cast the ambition wider still: 'Our goal is not just remittance but a full-fledged diaspora financial services platform to serve the African diaspora' (TechCabal). Remittance is the wedge; credit-building, multi-currency accounts and everyday banking for newly arrived immigrants are the intended destination — 'When you settle into a new country, you need to build a credit history,' Eniolorunda said (TechCrunch).
The move is backed by hard infrastructure spend, not just messaging. UK corporate filings reported by TechCabal show Moniepoint GB was incorporated in London on 18 February 2024 and set aside roughly $7.39 million for the UK build-out, of which about $3.77 million was spent between February and December 2024 — including some $1.26 million on administrative and infrastructure costs and a $2.51 million equity deposit toward acquiring Bancom Europe, an FCA-regulated electronic money institution whose acquisition was approved in July 2025. That licence, passportable across the European Economic Area, converts Moniepoint from a firm renting compliance under partners into one that owns its own UK regulatory permissions.
The financing backdrop hardened the bet in October 2025, when Moniepoint closed a $200 million Series C led by Development Partners International's ADP III fund and LeapFrog Investments, with Lightrock, Alder Tree Investments, Google's Africa Investment Fund, Visa, the IFC, Proparco, Swedfund and Verod Capital Management participating (fintech.global; Moniepoint). The company earmarked the round to 'accelerate expansion across the continent and into international markets,' with MonieWorld named as its diaspora vehicle. Moniepoint's stated discipline is notable: it says it will not launch additional corridors until MonieWorld is a top-two provider on UK–Nigeria (TechCabal).
In short, the anchored move is a beachhead: a profitable African fintech using home-generated scale and fresh growth capital to plant an owned, licensed banking operation in the UK, aimed first at the ~290,000-strong UK Nigerian community and, over time, at the broader African diaspora across the UK, US and Canada.