FairMoney acquires PayForce to broaden its financial services to merchants
As the digital lender seeks to expand its financial services offering to merchants, PayForce (a sub-brand of YC-backed CrowdForce), a merchant payment service that helps small businesses, has been purchased by Nigerian credit-led digital banking platform FairMoney.
Both firms opted not to reveal the agreement’s details. Yet, reports claim that the transaction was a $15 million to $20 million cash and stock deal. Oluwatomi Ayorinde, the CEO of CrowdForce, will lead FairMoney’s PayForce by FairMoney business division as part of the agreement.
While CrowdForce, through PayForce, offers agency banking services—a branchless banking model that extends financial services to the last mile via a network of human ATMs—FairMoney has primarily operated a credit-led neobanking strategy targeting retail clients. Yet, multiple iterations, competition-induced innovation and attracting venture financing have driven both organizations to grow beyond their core products to a multitude of offers as the digital retail and merchant banking industry develops.
PayForce began by giving retailers access to point-of-sale (POS) devices, enabling them to offer cash-in, cash-out, transfers, and bill payments to retail customers while supplying liquidity via a network of partners (the company claimed to have the most liquidity among Nigerian agent banking networks, totaling nearly 1.7 trillion Naira, to TechCrunch last year). The fintech has expanded its product line to include business banking, finance team tools, B2B payments, and virtual cards. It currently serves over 10,000 organizations. It raised a $3.6 million pre-Series A last February.
FairMoney, on the other hand, began with a digital lending product that offers loans to primarily retail customers for terms of 15 days to 24 months. About a million retail customers and small businesses now use the company’s debit accounts and cards, P2P transfers, and payments services, which have grown to constitute a significant portion of its revenue since it obtained a $42 million Series B in 2021.
