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 certainly one of Nigeria’s largest unbiased agent banking networks. But months before asserting the closure, the pan-African funds firm had been negotiating a sale of Baxi.

The proposed sale, which lined your entire 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 asserting Baxi’s closure, the corporate cited inflation, naira depreciation, rising working prices, shrinking margins, and progress in different fee strategies corresponding to account-to-account (A2A) transfers, which weakened offline funds. It mentioned the economics of working an offline agent community had grow to be unsustainable.

Onafriq’s assertion didn’t point out the potential purchaser or the standing of the negotiations. As of July 29, when the accounts have been authorized, negotiations have been nonetheless ongoing, and Onafriq mentioned it couldn’t reliably estimate the construction, timing, or monetary affect 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 companies 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 get well 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 searching for 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 lower company companies 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 companies generated considerably much less gross revenue than they did two years earlier. The enterprise additionally operated company-owned point-of-sale (PoS) terminals and offered short-term credit score to brokers whose pockets balances have 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 assets, 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 entire 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 government officer, said in the statement asserting 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 internet belongings. The write-offs meant Onafriq not anticipated the enterprise’s future earnings to justify that additional worth.

However, different elements of Onafriq’s group-wide enterprise have 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 companies whereas closing Baxi. Yet, Nigeria’s wider PoS market introduced a extra difficult image.

According to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the nation’s funds swap, 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, at the same time as deployed terminals elevated by 127%.

The variety of terminals was increasing a lot sooner than the transactions passing via them. For agent banking suppliers, extra units out there meant higher competitors for patrons, with no corresponding improve within the variety of transactions from which they may earn commissions.

Competition was additionally coming from a lot bigger operators. Moniepoint, certainly 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 in opposition to, which made its enterprise onerous to justify.

From enlargement to exit

Onafriq entered Nigeria’s agent banking market in October 2021, when the corporate, then often called 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 certainly one of Nigeria’s largest unbiased agent banking networks.

The acquisition was supposed 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 enlargement.

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 alternative.

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

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