South African fintech startup Curnance is working on revolutionising the financial landscape for international students and tourists in Africa by providing essential financial services and empowering individuals to build credit histories in foreign countries.
Formed in 2021 by CEO and founder Jeremiah Olamijuwon, Curnance collaborates with local banks to provide a diverse range of financial services. Users can open an account in minutes and enjoy the flexibility of conducting transactions, sending funds, and benefiting from the platform’s rewards programmes.
Olamijuwon told Disrupt Africa the idea for Curnance came to him after a scandal happened within a leading university in South Africa, among the International Students’ body.
“Some international students had requested someone to help them make payments in Rand, while they paid the student in South Africa in their local currency. The student who offered to help pay Rands did not fulfil his end of the deal,” he said.
The matter escalated, and Olamijuwon heard about the incident, helping some of the students to pay their fees while they worked towards retrieving their money.
“Because of the escalations, many students raised similar issues which they faced with other people, signifying that it was a major issue faced by international students, not only in that university,” he said.
So Olamijuwon decided to create a final and lasting solution to these issues, having also faced them himself as in South Africa and Benin Republic.
“Although there has been numerous talk about the African Continental Free Trade Area, there is a significant challenge – currency exchange,” he said. “It is still very difficult to do business among African countries, because of the many different currencies, unstable exchange rates, currency value depreciation and many others.”
Creating a “stronger Africa”, Olamijuwon said, means enabling the ease of trade, and Curnace aims to do that by creating the first “African international digital bank”.
“With Curnance, you can have a bank account anywhere in Africa and trade easily as though you were local to that country,” he said.
While international competitors like Wise, Revolut and Mukuru provide services which Curnance provides, Olamijuwon said his company has a competitive edge in terms of the wider range of financial services provided. Initially bootstrapped and funded by Olamijuwon’s IT consulting company, Curnance has raised funding from angel investors since launching its app late last year. It is now planning on raising a US$1 million seed round to capitalise on its early growth.
“Uptake has been impressive. Within six months of operations, Curnance processed over ZAR1 million (US$54,000) from South Africa and Eswatini alone. From Nigeria, Curnance has processed over NGN100 million (US$63,000)”, said Olamijuwon.
The startup, which is also active in Benin and Lesotho, plans to be active in 10 African countries by the end of this year, and present across all African countries by the end of 2026.
Curnance has operated a profitable business right from the start, Olamijuwon said.
“Curnance provides a wide range of financial services like savings, credit, and exchange. On credit, Curnance provides loans to users at an interest rate. On exchange, Curnance makes profit through markups,” said Olamijuwon.
