The archive · Money & Fintech · Strategic decision · 2004–2023
Cellulant bets one pipe collects payments in 35 African markets; still standing in 2023
From ringtones to a record $47.5M fintech round: Cellulant's single-integration bet that fragmented African payments could become one gateway.
Cellulant
What the business is
Pan-African payments gateway: businesses integrate once to collect and pay out across dozens of African countries through mobile money, bank and card channels, plus SME-facing products like Tingg.
Starting capital：$47.5M Series C led by TPG Growth's Rise Fund, closed in 2018, then the largest round ever raised by an African fintech.
How it started
Ken Njoroge and Bolaji Akinboro founded Cellulant in Nairobi in 2004 selling music and ringtones billed through phone airtime; when airtime billing kept failing, they approached banks for direct-debit access and found a bigger problem than their own collections.
What happened
Cellulant built bank-channel services, onboarded over 60 banks, then attracted airlines that wanted one integration to collect fares across Africa. By 2017 it processed $2.7B in payments; in 2018 it raised $47.5M from TPG Growth's Rise Fund, then the largest African fintech round, to scale its person-to-business and B2B platform across 33 countries, counting Barclays, Standard Chartered and Ecobank among clients. By October 2023 the company spanned 35 countries and 250+ payment methods for more than 2,000 large businesses, and had cut 20% of its workforce to shift toward a product-led structure.
How it ended up
Still operating as a private company in October 2023, with a smaller profile than the payment startups that followed it but a wider footprint, after layoffs and a product-led restructure.
Background
Cellulant began in 2004 as a Nairobi ringtone business run by Ken Njoroge and Bolaji Akinboro. Billing customers through phone airtime kept failing, so the founders asked banks for direct-debit access and discovered a larger opportunity: every bank, mobile-money operator and merchant in Africa struggled to collect payments across a continent of fragmented channels and currencies.
The company followed that pain step by step, from bank-channel services used by over 60 banks, to airlines wanting one integration to collect fares across countries, to a full payment gateway. By 2017 it processed $2.7B in payments, and in 2018 TPG Growth's Rise Fund led a $47.5M Series C, at the time the largest round raised by an African fintech, with clients including Barclays, Standard Chartered and Ecobank.
Scale came with turbulence. Cellulant's 33-country footprint grew to 35 countries and 250+ payment methods serving more than 2,000 large businesses by 2023, but the company also cut 20% of its workforce that year to reorganize around product-led growth rather than country-by-country operations.
The lasting bet is that Africa's payments fragmentation rewards a single gateway rather than local point solutions, and that a company old enough to have outlived several hype cycles can still own that layer.
What has to be true
- The founders lived the failure first: their own ringtone billing broke, so they knew the collection problem was real before building a product around it.
- The wedge compounded naturally: bank access led to airlines, and airlines proved that one integration across many countries was a sellable product.
- The 2018 round was a credibility landmark: $47.5M from TPG's Rise Fund was then the largest African fintech raise, and the company was already EBITDA-positive.
- The model hedged against hype: unlike consumer lenders that scaled on credit losses, Cellulant's gateway earns per transaction across 250+ payment methods.
What can be applied
The pain of fragmented payments, not the technology, was the business: follow the failure you experience yourself and build where one integration solves a cross-border mess.
Aftermath
As of October 2023 Cellulant remained a private, operating payments company across 35 African countries, having survived a founder-era leadership transition and a 20% workforce reduction by reorganizing around product-led growth; later reporting showed its SME payments platform Tingg scaling toward millions of daily transactions.
Sources
- Africa Roundup: African startup investments turn to fintech this winter season
- Cellulant: How we built a payment platform into 35 African countries
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