The archive · Money & Fintech · Strategic decision · 2009–2025
MFS Africa's interoperability bet: 320M wallets linked, $200M raised, now Onafriq
MFS Africa (now Onafriq) bet that wiring Africa's fragmented mobile-money networks into one hub would make borders matter less; $200M raised.
MFS Africa (Onafriq)
What the business is
MFS Africa is a pan-African digital-payments network that interconnects mobile-money wallets, bank accounts and agents so users on one network can send and receive money across borders and currencies.
Starting capital：Series C totaled $200M: $100M in Nov 2021 ($70M equity, $30M debt) plus a $100M extension in June 2022 led by Admaius Capital Partners; total equity raised was already over $95M by late 2021.
How it started
Founder Dare Okoudjou, a telecom engineer and executive, started the company in 2009 after a decade in telecoms, where he saw how mobile networks made calling across Africa simple. His dream was the same for money: any mobile wallet should transact with any other, starting with Kenya-to-Zambia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast peer-to-peer transfers.
What happened
Growth came through connecting mobile-money schemes and buying adjacent rails: the 2020 Beyonic acquisition, the 2021 Baxi deal that finally opened Nigeria, and the 2022 GTP acquisition for issuing prepaid cards to international e-commerce (including a Spotify acceptance deal). By the Nov 2021 Series C the network covered 320M wallets across 35+ countries; in Nov 2023 it rebranded to Onafriq, claiming 500M mobile-money wallets, 200M bank accounts and 40 African markets.
How it ended up
Still running and scaling: in June 2025 Onafriq said its network connected nearly 1B mobile-money wallets and 500M bank accounts, and in Sept 2025 Visa partnered with it in the DRC to let Visa Pay wallets fund from M-Pesa, Airtel Money and Orange Money.
Background
MFS Africa was founded in 2009 by Dare Okoudjou, a telecom engineer and executive, on a simple analogy: mobile phones made it easy to call anyone in Africa, so mobile wallets should make it equally easy to pay anyone. He started with peer-to-peer transfers between Kenya and Zambia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast, then merged the continent's fragmented mobile-money schemes into a single interoperable network.
The bet was 'any-to-any interoperability': connect every wallet, bank account and agent network so a user on one network could transact with someone on any other, across borders and currencies. Rather than build each corridor from scratch, MFS Africa expanded by acquisition — Beyonic in 2020, Nigeria's agent-banking platform Baxi in 2021 (about 90,000 agents), and US prepaid-card software GTP for $34M in 2022.
Capital followed the network: a $23M Series B in 2018, then a $100M Series C in Nov 2021 ($70M equity, $30M debt) co-led by AfricInvest FIVE, and a $100M extension in June 2022 led by Admaius Capital Partners that took the round to $200M. At the first tranche the network covered 320M mobile-money wallets across 35+ African countries and 700 corridors.
In Nov 2023 MFS Africa rebranded as Onafriq, claiming 500M mobile-money wallets, 200M bank accounts and 40 African markets. By its 15th anniversary in 2025 it said the network connected nearly 1B wallets and 500M bank accounts, and in Sept 2025 Visa partnered with it in the DRC to connect Visa Pay with M-Pesa, Airtel Money and Orange Money — still scaling, still running.
What has to be true
- Concrete, dated numbers: 320M wallets and 35+ countries at the Nov 2021 round, 500M wallets and 40 markets at the Nov 2023 rebrand, ~1B wallets in June 2025.
- The bet is clean and falsifiable: a fragmented market can be won by aggregating the fragments into one interoperable network.
- A distinctive strategy: acquisition-led expansion (Beyonic, Baxi, GTP) rather than organic country-by-country entry.
- First-hand reporting from TechCrunch and PYMNTS with dates and amounts, all opened and verified.
- Fills the Kenya/Africa fintech slot with a company still live and expanding, complementing library entries on payments rails.
What can be applied
When a market is fragmented across small local networks, the product can be the aggregation itself: buy the rails, wire them into one hub, and interoperability becomes the moat.
Aftermath
As of Sept 2026, Onafriq is still an independent, scaling business: it claims a network spanning 43 African markets with nearly 1B mobile-money wallets and 500M bank accounts, plus offices in the UK, US and China. Its Sept 2025 Visa partnership in the DRC shows the interoperability thesis extending to global card rails, and the company continues to position itself as the continent's payment-infrastructure layer rather than a consumer app.
Sources
- MFS Africa collects $100M to expand its digital payments gateway across the region
- MFS Africa acquires GTP for $34M, looks to expand to the US
- MFS Africa raises more capital to take its Series C to $200M
- Visa and Onafriq Expand Digital Wallet Capabilities in Democratic Republic of Congo
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