Amplify was one of the most innovative fintech startups to launch within the past decade. Maxwell Obi and Segun Adeyemi got the idea for the startup while they were enrolled for entrepreneurship training at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in the year 2015.
They founded Amplify to provide social banking solutions and a payment gateway that facilitates recurring payments for subscription-based businesses. After Maxwell and Adeyemi had concluded their training at MEST, they turned their full focus to Amplify. However, they never envisaged what was coming their way.
Read more about Websites We Love
It didn’t take long for One Finance and Investment Limited (OneFi), the money lending company behind the app, Carbon, to reach out to them and acquire the Amplify.
This merge has significantly benefited Maxwell and Segun and brought about several changes to the startup.
Before the Acquisition
Amplify was already a thriving platform before OneFi came knocking to acquire it. The founders had just launched its flagship product, mTransfers, a keyboard banking solution that enables users to make use of financial services via social media conversations.
They had launched mTransfers in some of the most prominent banks in Nigeria including Zenith bank’s Qwerty Banking and Fidelity Bank’s Flashkey.
Sign up to the Connect Nigeria daily newsletter
When OneFi came offering to acquire Amplify, Maxwell and Segun knew they were on the right track. In Maxwell’s words:
We however understood that OneFi is solving a really important challenge with technology, one that is paramount to the growth of our economy which is access to credit and quality financial services.
We have always admired their boldness and audaciousness in tackling these challenges and had a great relationship with the founders. Chijioke and Ngozi were on an endearing mission and consolidation made perfect sense for us.”
The objective OneFi had for Amplify aligned with both founders’ goals, hence they decided to run along with it.
After the Acquisition
For OneFI, AMplify was the vehicle through which digital financial services could be provided to their customers. OneFI’s goal to become a neo-bank and Amplify’s vision to promote economic growth through simple payment solutions corresponded with each other. This convinced Amplify’s founders to sell their startup to OneFi and this decision appears to have paid off.
Progress and the Goal to Become Top Digital Bank in Africa
The acquisition of Amplify by OneFI has set the startup on the path to solving many problems that have plagued the financial services space for a long time.
“Leading up to the acquisition of Amplify by OneFI, the financial services space, specifically online payments, was very different 3 years ago from what it is today.
Payment gateways were expensive, with very shoddy user experience, and quite difficult for businesses to integrate. The worst of this gap being that there was no way to efficiently process automatic debits/recurring type transactions without going to submit paperwork to your bank.
This was what we set out to solve, since then, we built two market-leading products, Amplify Pay and mTransfers, helped hundreds of Nigerian merchants accept one-time and recurring payments worth billions of naira, partnered with the biggest banks in Nigeria to launch ground-breaking products and assembled a great team of talented individuals”
said Maxwell.
Source:
Techpoint Africa
Featured Image Source: AmplifyPay
Did you find this article useful? Contact us: editor@connectnigeria.com
You might also like:
- Get Featured! Let’s Spotlight You To Over 50,000 Readers
- Websites We Love: Mygarage.africa
- Websites We Love: Spinheard
- Websites We Love: Selar
