👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Zedcrest acquires Leatherback

Moonshot Conversations is back on August 7. In partnership with Grey Business, the next session explores what it really takes for startups to expand across Africa. Our Senior Reporter Muktar Oladunmade will speak with Grey CEO and co-founder Idorenyin Obong on navigating fragmented regulations, cross-border payments, product localisation, and the trade-offs between rapid growth and long-term sustainability. Join the conversation at 11:00 a.m. WAT. Register here.

Become smarter about tech and commerce in Francophone Africa, and the policies shaping them. Read our newsletter here first or subscribe below.

Five years after backing cross-border payments startup Leatherback, Nigerian financial services group Zedcrest has decided it no longer wants to be just an investor. It now owns the company.

What happened? On Monday, Zedcrest acquired Leatherback for an undisclosed amount, noting that it plans to revive the startup’s cross-border payments ambitions, saying the opportunity remains “significantly underpenetrated.” According to the company, Leatherback will continue to operate independently under its own brand, team, and product suite, separating it from Zedcrest’s deeper traditional finance and wealth management focus.

Why did Zedcrest acquire Leatherback? Some investors wait for exits; others actively engineer them. Like in the case of OmniRetail and Traction Apps in 2024, investors saw an opportunity to bring payments infrastructure, licences, merchant relationships, and distribution under one roof instead of waiting for another buyer. With Leatherback, Zedcrest appears to have reached a similar conclusion: the fintech was becoming more valuable as part of its broader financial services ecosystem than as a standalone portfolio investment. The acquisition gives Zedcrest something it didn’t fully own before: infrastructure for collecting, holding, converting, and moving money across borders.

It makes a lot of sense when you consider how Zedcrest has set up its businesses. The group lends money (through Zedvance Finance), manages investments, and advises businesses on raising capital. Now, it also owns the technology that lets those businesses collect, hold, convert, and send money across borders. That gives Zedcrest control over the customer experience and another revenue stream every time money moves.

Explain like I’m new here: To those unfamiliar, this love story was years in the making—albeit with some turbulent bumps. When Leatherback raised $10 million in a pre-seed round in 2021 (significant at the time, and notably, when it was simply a cross-border fintech then), Zedcrest led that round. But after a few years marred by operational setbacks and a leadership reshuffle, the company has set its sights on a fintech infrastructure play for businesses across several markets. Some of those businesses could already be sitting in Zedcrest’s orbit, allowing it to cross-sell Leatherback’s services and providing a distribution moat.

What Leatherback stands to gain. Expanding into new countries means regulatory compliance, new licences, new banking partners, and hiring compliance teams. That’s expensive. Being backed by a larger financial institution means Leatherback can spend less time worrying about money and focus on its business.

Fincra now issues dedicated GHS virtual accounts to enable businesses to collect payments. See how Fincra GHS virtual accounts work.

There’s now a forgotten era when Kenyan digital lenders operated like ships without rudders. Back then, any “operator” could simply raise a few Shillings for loan-sharking, set up shop, lend at predatory rates, and harass borrowers to collect what they’re owed.

Slowly, that era faded. In 2022, digital lending licences became mandatory, with the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) approving 252 firms to operate in the space, as of July 2026. Taking it a step further,

Kenya has delivered another warning to unlicenced lenders.

What happened? A Kenyan court has ruled that unlicenced digital lenders cannot sue debtors for failing to repay their debts—legal speak for: no licence, no help getting your money back.

Explain like I’m new here: Before 2022, digital lenders existed in something of a regulatory grey area. That changed after years of complaints about excessive interest rates, abusive debt collection tactics and misuse of borrowers’ personal data. Kenyan Parliament amended the law in 2021, giving the CBK the power to regulate digital lenders. Since licencing began in 2022, the CBK has been publishing updated lists of licenced digital credit providers and gaining the power to suspend or revoke licences and inspect lenders that fail to comply with its rules.

Fast-forward to this month. Two lenders, Tri-State Capital and Mombo iCapital, took borrowers to court over unpaid loans. Normally, debt recovery is straightforward. If someone doesn’t repay a loan, the lender goes to court. But in these cases, the lenders couldn’t prove the CBK licenced themso the court threw out both suits before it even considered whether the borrowers actually owed the money.

Why should you care? Kenya’s digital lending market has over 800 operators; most still operate “illegally” or outside the licencing framework. Now, imagine who this ruling hurts. It changes the balance of power. It tells unlicenced lenders that if borrowers stop paying, the courts may not help them recover the money. That doesn’t erase the debt or make loans free. It simply means lenders operating outside the law could find themselves with very few legal options to enforce repayment.

The problem with that is, without adequate protection measures in place, we could see a rise in unethical debt collection again.

Transaction Guard lets you set single, daily, or monthly transaction limits. Whenever a transaction exceeds your chosen limit, facial verification is required before it can be completed, helping to prevent unauthorised transfers. With PalmPay, you stay in control. Learn more.

African communications ministers and industry leaders have adopted the Abuja Ministerial Declaration on Meaningful Connectivity and launched ATLAS Umoja AI, a pan-African initiative to build artificial intelligence systems that work in African languages.

The declaration was adopted at the African Telecommunications Union (ATU) conference in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, on July 24. The initiative brings together Nigeria, Kenya, Togo, Namibia and Benin, alongside the GSMA, Awarri, Zindi, Pawa AI and Mozisha. It builds on Nigeria’s N-ATLAS project, an open-source large language model launched at the United Nations’ General Assembly in September 2025.