Onafriq negotiated Baxi’s sale months before its closure

When Onafriq introduced it was shutting down Baxi, its Nigerian agent banking enterprise, on October 16, it marked the end of a five-year expansion effort that started when the corporate acquired considered one of Nigeria’s largest unbiased agent banking networks. But months before saying the closure, the pan-African funds firm had been negotiating a sale of Baxi.

The proposed sale, which coated all the company banking operation lively solely in Nigeria, remained unresolved as of July, in response to Onafriq’s audited financial statements filed within the United Kingdom.

In the assertion saying Baxi’s closure, the corporate cited inflation, naira depreciation, rising working prices, shrinking margins, and progress in various fee strategies akin to account-to-account (A2A) transfers, which weakened offline funds. It mentioned the economics of working an offline agent community had change into unsustainable.

Onafriq’s assertion didn’t point out the potential purchaser or the standing of the negotiations. As of July 29, when the accounts had been authorized, negotiations had been nonetheless ongoing, and Onafriq mentioned it couldn’t reliably estimate the construction, timing, or monetary impression of a sale.

“During 2026, Onafrıq Nigeria Payments Limited entered into a non-binding memorandum of terms with a purchaser in respect of the proposed divestment of the agency business,” the corporate said in the financial statements. “The proposed transaction contemplates the sale of 100% of the agency business and related operations, subject to the terms and conditions to be agreed between the parties in a definitive asset purchase agreement.”

By then, the enterprise had already suffered a pointy monetary decline. Onafriq’s company providers income fell 56% to $13.4 million in 2024, from $30.4 million the earlier yr. The firm additionally wrote off the remaining $4.56 million in goodwill tied to its Nigerian funds enterprise, reflecting a decline within the worth it anticipated to recuperate from the funding.

The tried sale reversed the technique that introduced Onafriq into Nigeria. The firm had acquired Baxi to attach an enormous community of cash-based brokers to its pan-African funds infrastructure. 

Five years later, it was in search of an acquirer to take over that community. By October, it was telling Baxi’s brokers—over 460,000 as of 2025—to maneuver their funds elsewhere.

An unfinished sale

Baxi’s declining income was solely a part of its monetary troubles. Although Onafriq reduce company providers prices from $17 million in 2023 to $8.7 million in 2024, gross revenue fell even sooner, declining by 65% from $13.4 million to $4.7 million, according to its financial report.

The group’s company enterprise generated about $35 in gross revenue for each $100 in income in 2024, down from $44 the earlier yr. That left significantly much less cash to cowl salaries, expertise, and different working bills.

By the time Onafriq started negotiating a sale in 2026, its company providers generated considerably much less gross revenue than they did two years earlier. The enterprise additionally operated company-owned point-of-sale (PoS) terminals and supplied short-term credit score to brokers whose pockets balances had been working low.

According to Onafriq, brokers usually had one to seven days to repay the loans, with rates of interest starting from 2.5% to 7% for every mortgage. The firm funded the credit score from its personal sources, assessed brokers’ creditworthiness, and picked up repayments and managed defaults.

In July 2026, Onafriq mentioned its Nigerian subsidiary, Onafriq Nigeria Payments Limited, owed ₦13.8 billion ($10.4 million) to Zenith Bank, a Nigerian tier-1 lender, and ₦6.1 billion ($4.6 million) to Stanbic IBTC Bank, a mid-tier financial institution, in excellent overdrafts, bringing the whole to ₦19.9 billion ($15 million), its filings showed.

“We entered Nigeria with conviction and commitment, but did not achieve the outcome we set out for,” Dare Okoudjou, Onafriq’s founder and chief govt officer, said in the statement saying Baxi’s shutdown in Nigeria.

The economics behind Baxi’s retreat

Onafriq had already begun writing down the worth of its Nigerian funds enterprise before Baxi’s shutdown. It wrote off $2.4 million in goodwill in 2023 and the remaining $4.56 million in 2024, according to its filings.

Goodwill is the additional worth recorded when an organization buys a enterprise, past the worth of its identifiable web property. The write-offs meant Onafriq not anticipated the enterprise’s future earnings to justify that further worth.

However, different components of Onafriq’s group-wide enterprise had been performing higher. Revenue from cash switch charges grew by 20% to $43.9 million in 2024. The group’s card payment income additionally jumped 22%.

The contrasting efficiency helps clarify why Onafriq retained its funds community and card-issuing providers whereas closing Baxi. Yet, Nigeria’s wider PoS market offered a extra sophisticated image.

According to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the nation’s funds change, PoS transactions’ worth rose 79% to ₦18.78 trillion ($14.1 billion) within the first quarter of 2026. The variety of deployed PoS terminals had greater than doubled, from 2.45 million on the finish of 2023 to five.56 million on the finish of 2024.

But the expansion in transaction worth hid a a lot slower improve within the variety of funds. In 2024, NIBSS data showed PoS transaction volumes rose by simply 8%, from 1.4 billion to 1.5 billion, whilst deployed terminals elevated by 127%.

The variety of terminals was increasing a lot sooner than the transactions passing by means of them. For agent banking suppliers, extra units available in the market meant larger competitors for purchasers, and not using a corresponding improve within the variety of transactions from which they might earn commissions.

Competition was additionally coming from a lot bigger operators. Moniepoint, considered one of Baxi’s rivals, already had over 800,000 PoS terminals in Nigeria on the finish of 2024. By 2026, the quantity had grown to over one million active PoS terminals within the nation. 

The Nigerian fintech unicorn mentioned it served over six million businesses in 2025, underscoring the dimensions of the networks Baxi was competing towards, which made its enterprise arduous to justify.

From growth to exit

Onafriq entered Nigeria’s agent banking market in October 2021, when the corporate, then often known as MFS Africa, announced its acquisition of Capricorn Digital Limited, the corporate behind Baxi. The deal was accomplished in March 2022 after receiving the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) approval.

At the time, Baxi had greater than 90,000 brokers offering money withdrawals, transfers, and invoice funds. The community processed over $1.6 billion in transactions in 2021, making it considered one of Nigeria’s largest unbiased agent banking networks.

The acquisition was meant to attach Baxi’s bodily distribution community to MFS Africa’s cross-border funds infrastructure. In June 2022, the corporate additionally secured debt financing from Stanbic IBTC Bank to assist Baxi’s growth.

Five years later, Onafriq is dismantling that technique. Following the shutdown, it mentioned it had transferred Baxi’s brokers to a different principal financial institution and given them 30 days to maneuver their funds to a principal financial institution of their selection.

Onafriq will proceed working in Nigeria by means of its funds community and card-issuing providers, however with out the agent banking enterprise it acquired to determine a foothold within the nation’s offline funds market.

True scale calls for transferring past surface-level integrations to strong execution. We’ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the convention strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, international monetary operators, enterprise leaders and people rewiring Africa’s technical frameworks. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a limited time.