Nigerian cross-border payments fintech Pesa has launched its consumer money-transfer business in Australia, opening a new corridor that allows customers to send Australian dollars to Nigeria and other markets through its app.

The move targets one of the world's most expensive remittance regions. In Q2 2024, the average cost of sending remittances Sub-Saharan Africa stood at 8.37%, the highest regional average recorded by the World Bank, which benchmarks its pricing comparisons on a standard $200 transfer. Cross-border transfers have also historically involved multiple intermediaries and settlement delays before money reaches its recipient. Over the past decade, fintechs have tried to close those gaps, especially for migrants who regularly send money between their country of residence and home. Pesa is among the companies building around this problem.

Founded in 2021 by Tolu Osho, Yusuf Yakubu, and Adewale Afolabi as PesaPeer, the company started as a digital remittance business focused on helping people move money across borders and rebranded to Pesa in 2023.

With the new corridor, customers can send Australian dollars to Nigeria and other African countries, the Philippines, India, Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada through Pesa's app. The company says the expansion enables dual-directional money transfers between Australia and Nigeria, and that it offers the Australian service under authorisation from the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), the government agency responsible for supervising anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing compliance across Australia's financial system.

The launch gives Pesa access to a country that sent about $25 billion in remittances abroad in 2024. According to the 2021 Australian Census, more than 12,000 people living in Australia were born in Nigeria. In 2024, Nigerian migrants in Australia remitted more than 6.8 times Nigeria's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, a measure of the country's economic output per person.

“Building true financial infrastructure for borderless communities means going directly to where the diaspora lives and securing direct access to local payment rails,” Osho, chief executive officer and co-founder of Pesa, said in a statement. “For too long, families sending money from regions like Australia lost significant value to hidden banking markups and multi-day delays. By securing direct regulatory standing, we eliminate those middleman costs entirely and ensure funds land safely in seconds.”

Pesa is targeting a growing African diaspora it believes existing cross-border remittance options do not adequately serve.

“The Australian African diaspora is growing fast. That's one of the things that we saw,” Adeola Ayoade, Pesa's chief operating officer, told TechCabal in an interview. “We did some research and realised that despite how fast that diaspora market is growing, cross-border remittance is still largely underserved. There were not so many players that were able to serve users or diasporans in that area of the world, and we thought it would be a great feat for us to accomplish.”

For an Australia-to-Nigeria transfer, the customer funds the transaction through their Australian bank account. Pesa then pays the Nigerian recipient from liquidity it says it already holds in Nigeria, rather than waiting for the Australian funds to move through multiple correspondent banks.

“Most of the delay in traditional remittance across borders comes from money hopping through different correspondent banks or institutions,” Ayoade said. “We keep liquidity ready in Nigeria ahead of time, so when a customer sends a transfer or confirms a transfer on their end in any other country to Nigeria, we are not waiting for that money to move physically across borders or between the different banks or the different institutions that we work with.”

Pesa says it has worked with local partners to make the corridor function. However, the company did not disclose the partners supporting the Australian launch. Pesa added that it takes on more liquidity and foreign exchange risk, as prices remain unchanged when a customer confirms a transaction, even if the exchange rate changes before settlement.

In entering Australia, Pesa joins global players including Remitly and Wise, as well as local players such as LemFi and Flutterwave, which allow customers in Australia to send money to Nigeria through mobile wallets and transfers. The company said it will compete on speed, transparency, and the fact that its Australian corridor works in both directions. Although Pesa says it does not charge a fee on transactions, it generates revenue from the foreign exchange spread—the difference between the rate at which it buys and sells currencies.

The Australian launch follows an earlier expansion in March, when Pesa opened its cross-border payment infrastructure to businesses and fintechs, allowing them to use the rails it had built for international money movement. Australia gives the company another consumer corridor to deploy that infrastructure. Pesa did not disclose its next markets, but it says it is considering more corridors.

“We took time to build this out so that we launch properly. We are locally regulated and are working with the right partners. That took some time,” Ayoade said. “Knowing that we're doing all this work and taking the time to identify risk, put the right resources in place, and make sure we have the right infrastructure, we are sure this is a success already.”