If there are a few things that everybody agrees on, it’s that Africans need a helping hand. That also includes financial inclusion. Globally, we’ve seen DFIs and other government and non-governmental organizations pouring billions of dollars to help Africans. From the Gates Foundation to the Germans at KfW and DEG. Everybody’s trying to help build a world where being born African doesn’t mean you’re automatically shut out of finance.
In fact, the M-Pesa that we all love was actually created and funded by the British government. And that’s good. You’d think that with all this effort and money, everybody would agree on one thing: you don’t profit off the vulnerable, at least not in a direct and blatant way. But guess what? You’d be wrong. I didn’t realize just how bad Africans, especially the poor ones, were being taken advantage of until I started growing Lendsqr across the continent.
The moment it hit me
Of course, before Lendsqr went continental, I already had a fair share of exposure to different African markets. I’d seen the good, the bad, and the bureaucratic. Payments systems were mostly similar. The card networks were familiar, the central banks often looked to one another for regulatory cues, and we all complained about the same things — settlement delays, interchange fees, and poor infrastructure.
But as we began expanding Lendsqr into other countries, the numbers started telling me a story that was too outrageous to ignore.
Let’s start with Nigeria; a country that, for all its chaos, somehow manages to have one of the most efficient and affordable digital payment ecosystems in Africa. Moving money in Nigeria costs next to nothing. Transfer ₦10,000, and your fee is usually capped at ₦10. Transfer ₦100,000, and it might rise to ₦25. Even for big business payments moving billions, it rarely crosses ₦50 and that’s barely $0.03.
Platforms like Paystack, Flutterwave, Monnify, and Quickteller all hover around 1.5%, and even that is capped at ₦2,000 (around $1.33). In fact, for micro-transactions, some banks and fintechs absorb the fees entirely. The Central Bank, for all its overreach, has at least tried to protect the little guy by mandating free ATM withdrawals for the poor, capping transfer fees, and pushing interoperability so you can send money without burning your pocket.
So naturally, I assumed this was the norm across Africa. How very wrong I was.
When 2.5% (uncapped) feels like a victory
The first shock came when one of our customers in East Africa called to share “good news.” They had just secured a disbursement deal capped at 2.5% per transaction. I remember them sounding so happy, as if they had just won a grant.
I was confused. I asked them to repeat it. Two point five percent? They confirmed it proudly. That means if you move $100,000 through a system like that, you lose $2,500 instantly to transaction fees. That’s money that creates no value. It doesn’t make systems faster or safer. It just disappears into someone’s pocket.
I could not believe it. I even joked that at this rate, they might as well throw a street party and call in King Sunny Ade to celebrate being robbed.
I remember spending days thinking, what kind of daylight robbery is this? But it didn’t stop there. I dug deeper and the numbers got uglier.
The more I looked, the worse it got
Across Africa, fintechs and payment providers are quietly making the poor pay some of the highest transaction costs in the world. The more I dug, the more absurd it became. I even got my team to scour the web: pricing pages, documentation, and payment terms across 54 African countries, just to be sure I wasn’t overreacting. Every single number we found was public information, sitting in plain sight. And we’ll be releasing all that data soon. For now, let me give you a few examples.
In Rwanda, KPay charges 5% for collecting money whether by card or mobile money. Five percent. That’s $25 in fees for every $500 transaction. In a country where average monthly income barely crosses $150, that’s criminal.
In Benin Republic, PayPlus also charges 5% on card collections. Flutterwave, which charges around 2% in Nigeria, charges 4.8% in countries like Malawi and Rwanda, and the same 4.8% in South Africa. PesaPal charges 3.5% in Rwanda.
Now compare that with Stripe or Square in the US or UK, both of which charge 2.9%, and that’s in countries with far better infrastructure, faster reconciliation, and clearer consumer protection. Even PayPal, notorious for its greed, caps its domestic fees around 2 to 4%.
So why should a small business in Kigali or Cotonou pay almost double what a startup in California pays just to move money from one account to another?
The same Africa, different rules
It gets even crazier when you realize that these fintechs are often the same companies operating across multiple African countries. Flutterwave, Paystack, PawaPay, and others have the same brand, same technology stack, same continent, yet wildly different fees.
For instance, Flutterwave in Nigeria charges 2% capped at ₦1,500 ($10). The same company in Rwanda charges 3.5%, and in Malawi it goes up to 4.8%. KPay in Rwanda sits comfortably at 5%. Meanwhile, Wave, which operates in Senegal and Burkina Faso, charges just 1%, which may or may not be proof that fair pricing is absolutely possible on this continent.
In some cases, moving $100,000 through certain fintechs in West Africa could cost $3,000 in fees, while the same transaction through Stripe in the US would barely touch $1,000. And remember, most of these African countries are poorer, less industrialized, and more dependent on small-scale entrepreneurs, traders, and hustlers trying to survive.
When you factor in how many of these payments happen daily; school fees, remittances, salaries, small business transactions, you start to see the scale of the bleed. We’re talking billions of dollars lost every year to “financial inclusion” intermediaries that promise to help the poor, but instead charge them for breathing.
We can’t keep blaming “the West”
What makes this even more painful is that we’ve built a culture of blaming the West for our exploitation while turning a blind eye to the predators among us. It’s fashionable to say “colonialism” or “IMF” whenever Africans are suffering, but at some point, we have to admit that a lot of the exploitation today is homegrown.
It’s Africans charging Africans outrageous rates to send money within Africa. It’s African fintechs, armed with DFI grants meant to “empower inclusion,” who’ve decided the best way to grow is to tax the poor until they collapse.
I’ve seen fintechs brag about “connecting Africa” while charging 3 to 6% on every mobile money transaction. That’s not inclusion. That’s extortion smartly coiffed and dressed up as innovation.
And don’t get me wrong, I know infrastructure costs a whole lot of money. Integrations, agent networks, regulatory licenses, none of it is free. But there’s a difference between sustainable pricing and sheer greed. The reality is, we’ve normalized gouging because the victims don’t have a voice.
The hypocrisy of “financial inclusion”
The biggest irony is that fintech was supposed to fix this. We came to make finance fairer, cheaper, and faster. Yet, here we are, with local fintechs charging fees that would get Western CEOs crucified in the press.
In the US, if Stripe decided to raise its fees from 2.9% to 5%, it would make headlines on TechCrunch, analysts would shred them in opinion pieces, and regulators would swarm. Customers would revolt immediately. But in Africa, we quietly call it “market dynamics” and move on, as though poverty itself justifies exploitation.
When you see fintechs like KPay in Rwanda taking 5% per transaction, you start to realize this may likely be exploitation disguised as “financial inclusion”. At that rate, the poor can’t save, can’t scale, can’t breathe.
Take a moment to think about this; If you were to move $100,000 through a 5% network, you would lose $5,000. Do it ten times a month, and that is $50,000 gone just for moving money that already belongs to you. Imagine a small business trying to pay its staff or suppliers under such conditions.
And the worst part? These same fintechs often use the language of inclusion and empowerment to raise money from global investors and DFIs. They pitch themselves as saviors of Africa’s unbanked population while quietly charging the unbanked three to four times what a London café owner pays on Square.
Where do we go from here?
Moving money around Africa shouldn’t cost an arm, a leg, and your firstborn. If M-Pesa can process transactions for 0.5% in Kenya and Wave can charge 1% in Senegal, then the excuse of “infrastructure cost” doesn’t hold water.
It is time for fintech founders and investors to take a hard look at their pricing models and ask if this is the Africa they claim to be building for. Regulators must begin to link licensing approvals to transparent, fair pricing.
If we are truly building for Africa, then let’s prove it by pricing fairly. Let’s stop pretending that charging 5% fees in a continent still struggling with poverty is acceptable. We’ve got to stop pretending this is okay. African fintechs can’t keep shouting “financial inclusion” while fucking robbing the poor blind.