Kredete, a New York–headquartered fintech founded in 2023, is our Startup of the Week for its ambitious push to give African immigrants the financial footing they need to thrive globally. With a recently closed Series A in September 2025, the company is stitching together payments, credit, and identity into a single rails-and-apps platform designed for people who live between continents.
Product and Mission
Kredete’s mission is straightforward: empower African immigrants with financial power, trust, and tools so that money not only moves with them, but works for them. The company delivers this through a suite that spans a digital lending marketplace, instant cross-border money transfers, credit-building services, virtual cards, a stablecoin-backed credit card, and business-grade financial infrastructure. Users can send money instantly to more than 25 African countries, receive direct deposits early, spend with USD credit cards, and build credit with every transfer. Behind the scenes, the platform connects users to more than 1,200 lending partners, translating remittance behavior into credit opportunities that travel with the customer, not just their cash.
Market Opportunity and Traction
Kredete is explicitly “built by African immigrants for African immigrants,” addressing everyday pain points of being credit invisible in a new market while still supporting families back home. The company positions itself not merely as a payments app, but as a bridge to a functional financial identity across borders. That proposition appears to be resonating: according to the company, Kredete has processed more than $1 billion and serves over one million monthly users. By letting customers earn credit history through remittances, Kredete reframes a routine expense into an asset that unlocks financing for individuals and small businesses. The approach also reduces the friction of starting over financially in a new country, giving newcomers a path to credit access without waiting years to establish domestic histories.
Technology and Infrastructure
Kredete’s stack blends consumer features with institutional plumbing. Stablecoin rails, virtual accounts, and programmable credit-building tools anchor the architecture, while the lending marketplace orchestrates underwriting with a broad partner network. The company emphasizes compliance and infrastructure as competitive moats, positioning itself to power other businesses as much as end users. That dual focus has not gone unnoticed: Kredete has been featured in the African Blockchain Report published by CV VC and Absa Corporate and Investment Banking, a nod to its role in the continent’s emerging digital-asset and fintech corridors.
Leadership
CEO Adeola Adedewe brings a background in structured finance and experience across fintech and SaaS. He has framed Kredete’s strategy around transforming remittances into recognized credit signals, leading the company through rapid growth and its latest financing. CTO Hakeem Oriola has more than a decade of software delivery across finance, logistics, insurance, and health, with deep expertise in C#/.NET and SAP Business One integrations. His focus on problem-solving and systems integration underpins Kredete’s ability to connect disparate financial services into a coherent, compliant platform for the diaspora.
Funding and Backers
Kredete has raised a over $24.8 million across multiple rounds, capped by a $22 million Series A in September 2025. The round was led by AfricInvest Group via its Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund and Financial Inclusion Vehicle (FIVE), with participation from Partech and Polymorphic Capital. The broader cap table includes Launch Africa, Blockchain Founders Fund, Techstars.
By recasting remittances as a pathway to credit and coupling consumer-friendly tools with enterprise-grade infrastructure, Kredete is building a financial system that works for the African diaspora rather than around it. The company’s traction, extensive lender network, and fresh Series A put it in a strong position to scale its marketplace and money-movement rails across the U.S.–Africa corridor and beyond. If it continues to convert everyday cross-border flows into portable financial identity, Kredete could become a defining platform for immigrants seeking to build, not just send, their financial futures.