VitalSwap acquires money transmitter licence to simplify cross border payments for African professionals and businesses

Akinsola Jegede didn’t wake up one day hoping to build a fintech company. He just kept getting shut out. He was shut out when he tried to pay for tuition abroad and was told dollars were unavailable. Shut out again when his international debit card got blocked at 1 a.m., leaving him stranded in a country he’d never been to. 

He tried to help pay for a relative’s cancer treatment from overseas, but remittance platforms wouldn’t cooperate. That loved one died the next day. He once spent weeks trying to move his own legitimately earned $20,000 for an investment back home. Five remittance apps later, he’d lost $5,000 in conversion value and missed the opportunity entirely.

“In all these challenges, I was either a student or a professional earning honest income,” he says. “The same system put in place to prevent fraudsters and money launderers is also a hindrance to accessing global opportunities. This is the reality of African professionals and businesses.”

From that place of friction, frustration, and heartbreak came VitalSwap, which is budding as a platform built to make high-volume, cross-border payments work for Africans instead of against them.

Forget what you think fintech looks like. VitalSwap isn’t leading with shiny debit cards or gamified interfaces, even though that is part of the story. Its story isn’t about VC buzzwords or viral growth hacks. It’s about function, reliability, and redesigning the pipes of global commerce to include the people who have been historically locked out.

Akinsola says it plainly: “We are not positioning for virtual cards. We are positioning for high-volume transactions for professionals and businesses.”

And the platform is doing exactly that. Whether it’s a Nigerian architect paying for CAD software, a Ghanaian consultant billing a U.S. client, or a small factory owner wiring funds for imported equipment, VitalSwap is removing the middlemen, simplifying compliance, and delivering better exchange rates (2% to 40% better, in fact) through its intelligent liquidity-matching engine.

Behind the technology is a story worth telling. Not just a fintech story, a human one.

Made to be the stranger who helps

You can trace Akinsola Jegede’s approach to a specific moment: New Jersey. Bus terminal. $15 in his pocket. Ticket rescheduling costs $20. He’d just paid tuition, and had nothing left.

“I asked if she [ticketing agent] could help and she said no without recourse, pity or empathy,” he recalls. “Just at that moment, a lady beside me stepped in and helped with the $5 difference.”

That five-dollar kindness reshaped his definition of leadership. “Whenever I think about this experience, I ask myself who I would rather be. The ticket agent or the stranger that stepped in with kindness and empathy. I chose the stranger.”

That choice runs through everything at VitalSwap, from its support playbook (“sleep-safe support model,” they call it) to how customer feedback makes its way directly into engineering sprints. When users complain, team leads are already watching the chat transcripts. No one needs to beg for updates. “Once a customer reports an issue, they can go to sleep,” says Akinsola. “Our representatives will take it from there.”

Empathy is one part of the story. The other part is audacity. Akinsola grew up in Ibadan, raised in a community that prized contribution over credentials. By six, he was reselling biscuits on his street. By his early twenties, he was running a virtual consulting business, transacting millions in inventory for clients he hadn’t even met in person.

He taught himself programming, sharpened his business acumen, and became a Salesforce consultant helping Fortune 500 firms in the U.S. His frustration wasn’t abstract. He knew what systems could do, and couldn’t understand why they kept failing people like his cousin, a Nigerian doctor trying to pay for an exam abroad. “He had the money, the ambition, but the system was the obstacle.”

VitalSwap is what happens when someone gets tired of watching obstacles win.

Today, the platform is a financial bridge designed not for hype, but for access. African professionals can now get free U.S. bank accounts, use payment links to receive international payments, and move funds at scale without relying on platforms that have historically excluded them.

“We’ve eliminated the need for platforms like Stripe and PayPal for Africa-bound businesses,” says Akinsola.

How? With a tool called Pay With VitalSwap. A U.S. or UK business can now accept payment from a Nigerian customer in Naira, while the business gets settled in USD. Instantly. No foreign exchange drama, no compliance roadblocks. Just trust and efficiency. It’s not a nice-to-have, it’s a reimagining of how African businesses can interact with the global economy.

This capability is already live. Some businesses are already using it. Nigerian businesses will get access next month. And the company isn’t stopping there.

VitalSwap recently opened up its AI-powered FX API which lets developers tap into the real-time engine that delivers the best USD/NGN rates by continuously analysing liquidity offers and matching demand.

“AI is truly helping us to move beyond reactive support to predictive service,” Akinsola says. “It flags patterns before they become issues.”

That’s not just a technical feature. It’s a philosophy. One that mirrors the founder’s approach to everything: see the problem before it hurts someone.

A new economy needs new rails

Akinsola isn’t just building for the present. He’s designing for what’s next: African freelancers exporting talent, African tech companies closing global clients, African importers paying suppliers without FX gymnastics.

It’s the rise of the African Talent Economy. And it needs financial infrastructure that actually works.

“Do you know in most cases, the difference between poverty and prosperity is access to opportunities?” Akinsola asks.

That insight isn’t theory for him. It comes from real faces, real stories, like the young man in his neighbourhood who once asked for NGN50 just to eat and plan his day. Or the cousin whose dreams stalled because he couldn’t pay for an exam. Or himself, sleeping broke in a New Jersey terminal after paying for tuition with no backup plan.

He learned early that middle-class Africans can slip into financial exclusion without warning. Not because they lack talent or discipline, but because the tools available to them weren’t built with them in mind. That’s what VitalSwap aims to change.

It does this by doing the boring, necessary work. Acquiring licences. Building compliance-first rails. Tokenising sensitive data. Hiring security leads from Western Union and top Nigerian banks. Giving every user the dignity of being treated like a legitimate actor, not a default risk.

It also does it by staying humble. Feedback loops stay tight. Support channels stay human. The team builds like they’re still trying to earn trust, because they are.

And yes, they’re scaling. With $260,000 raised from Elevate Ventures, BeNimble Foundation, and angels, VitalSwap isn’t coasting. It’s rolling out the infrastructure layer African professionals have been waiting for: to receive money, to send it, to build with it, to dream with it.

Not long ago, Akinsola was the workaround. The cousin everyone called when PayPal failed or naira scarcity struck. He remembers the pain. He remembers the delay. But mostly, he remembers the rage of knowing you’re legitimate, and still being treated like you don’t belong in the global system.

Now, he’s building a new one.

VitalSwap isn’t selling hope. It’s delivering access. The kind that makes it possible to pay for your education on time. To grab the investment deal without bleeding value. To help a relative without running through five apps. To operate in the global economy without wearing a disguise.

“We don’t just process transactions,” Akinsola says. “We solve problems, remove friction, and create tangible value.”

This isn’t just his mission. It’s his memory. His muscle. His motive. And now, it’s his company.

Visit VitalSwap now to remove the cross border bottleneck you have been battling with.