Kenyan cross-border fintech WapiPay enters Canada with money services licence

WapiPay, a Kenyan cross-border payments fintech, has entered the North American market after securing a Money Services Business (MSB) licence from the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), part of the company’s global expansion.

The licence allows the company to offer foreign exchange, money transfer, and payment services in Canada through a newly established subsidiary, while also providing regulatory approval to handle virtual currency and digital asset transactions.

The approval gives the Nairobi-founded company its first regulated operational hub in North America, extending a payments network that already includes Africa, Asia, the UK and the Caribbean.

“Securing a footprint in North America through obtaining a Money Services Business licence is a massive milestone for WapiPay,” co-founder and CEO Edward Ndichu told TechCabal on Saturday. 

“By pairing traditional fiat payment capabilities with virtual currencies and digital assets under a robust Canadian regulatory framework, we are building the next generation of global financial rails.”

Global ambitions

The expansion comes as African fintech startups seek regulatory licences across multiple jurisdictions to facilitate faster cross-border payments, particularly between developed markets and emerging economies where correspondent banking remains costly and fragmented.

According to the World Bank, sending $200 to Sub-Saharan Africa costs an average of about 7.7% of the transaction value, making it the world’s most expensive remittance corridor and well above the UN Sustainable Development Goal target of 3%. This creates a large market for fintechs promising faster and cheaper settlement.

The North American entry is part of fintech’s global expansion over the past year, Ndichu told TechCabal. In April, WapiPay secured regulatory approval to launch in Jamaica, using the Caribbean nation as a gateway for remittance and trade flows between Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. 

Founded in 2019 by twins Eddie Ndichu and Paul Ndichu, the company initially focused on facilitating payments between Africa and Asia, targeting traders and small businesses moving goods across those corridors. But in recent months, it has also begun to push deeper into the financial services that sit atop those transactions.

In February, it launched a remittance-based credit-scoring platform designed to help Kenyan banks use diaspora remittances to assess borrowers with little or no formal credit history, an attempt to turn billions of dollars in annual remittances into usable financial data for lenders.