Moniepoint Acquires 78% Stake in Sumac Microfinance Bank to Enter Kenya and Expand SME Lending
A Nigerian fintech company, Moniepoint, has expanded its services by officially entering Kenya by acquiring a 78% stake in Sumac Microfinance Bank. After this deal was finalized, Moniepoint now has access to a deposit-taking licence, enabling it to expand SME lending and compete with major players like Safaricom and Equity Group.
With this new development, Moniepoint is able to get around Kenya’s long-standing regulatory restrictions on granting new banking licenses by purchasing the majority of Sumac, a company that provides micro that has been in business for more than 20 years.
This approach is in line with a rising trend among financial technology firms to develop through transactions as compared to awaiting new permits. While scaling small business enterprises across Kenya, leveraging Moniepoint's technology and Nigerian experience.
Additionally, the growth corresponds with Moniepoint's overarching plan to create an integrated corporate environment. The company intends to integrate financial services with operational tools like inventory management, payroll, and working capital solutions after recently purchasing Orda, a developer of restaurant management software.
This action became finalized after a couple of years of Moniepoints’s attempts to gain traction in Kenya, including an acquisition of the payments company Kopo Kopo that had previously stalled. With the end result of the Sumac purchase, the business now has access to the branch network, current customer base, and regulatory structure required to execute its services at scale.
Moniepoint is now establishing itself as a pan-African fintech leader, expanding beyond Nigeria into East Africa and potentially other regions.
About Moniepoint
Tosin Eniolorunda and Felix Ike founded Moniepoint in 2015 as a platform that provides banking, payments, and credit services for businesses and individuals. It supports millions of users, especially SMEs, with POS terminals, loans, and digital banking tools, driving financial inclusion and processing billions of transactions across Africa.