Building a $47 million fintech to address cross-border payments for African travellers is a major achievement. But overcoming embassy visa barriers is a problem no line of code can solve.

Before launching Timon, co-founders Oluwatomi Ayorinde and Chizaram Ucheaga spent years dealing with the frustrations of travelling on Nigerian passports—from rationing cash in envelopes in India to watching bank cards fail in Paris. They turned those experiences into an independent, multi-currency travel card that has grown to more than 100,000 users across 16 African markets.

When US crypto accelerator Alliance backed the startup, however, the same border barriers resurfaced. The investment arrived within two weeks, but an expired US visa meant only one founder could travel to California.

In this edition of Digital Nomads, Emmanuel Nwosu traces how the two Nigerian founders relocated to Nairobi to build a $47 million travel-focused fintech and why physical borders remain a major constraint for African entrepreneurs.

A familiar visa problem

Securing an invitation to Y Combinator (YC), the Silicon Valley startup accelerator, is a milestone for many founders. But obtaining a US visa can threaten to derail the opportunity.

Ayorinde, co-founder of Timon, a startup that issues cards to frequent travellers, encountered this problem in 2016. His previous startup, Mobile Forms, had been invited to interview at YC’s headquarters in California. It was his first trip to the US, and he had little time to prepare.

A backlog at the American Embassy in Lagos threatened to leave Ayorinde and his team without enough time to attend the interview. According to Ayorinde, investor Kola Aina of Ventures Platform, which had backed Mobile Forms, contacted people who could help expedite their visa interviews.

The embassy eventually issued the visas with only days to spare.

“Have you ever tried calling an embassy line? Nobody picks it,” Ayorinde said.

Mobile Forms was not accepted into YC during that cycle, but the experience stayed with him. It was one of several obstacles he encountered while travelling on a Nigerian passport and contributed to his decision to renew his US visa even when he had no immediate travel plans.

The journeys before Timon

In 2010, Ayorinde chose India over a master’s degree. He persuaded his parents to let him take a three-month professional course in Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP) software, which he considered a lucrative skill at the time. Relatively few people held the certification, he said, and studying in India was cheaper than pursuing a master’s degree.

Accessing money was more difficult. His mother relied on Nigerians travelling to India to bring him cash. On one occasion, her pastor delivered the money. Ayorinde kept the cash in an envelope and spent it gradually.

In 2011, he joined SAP, the German software company, and was sent to Germany for a seven-day work event. He spent a full day queuing at the German embassy to submit his application. The visa arrived so late that he missed the first two days, according to Ayorinde.

“It was a seven-day event, and when the visa came out, they gave me a visa for that exact seven days,” he said.

Germany also exposed him to the difficulties of spending money abroad. Ayorinde relied on a GTBank dollar card issued by the Nigerian tier-1 lender. He funded it by swapping naira for dollars through the bank. Some payments went through, while others failed. That funding step meant spending abroad depended first on a bank’s willingness to sell dollars.

Ucheaga, who would later become Ayorinde’s co-founder at Timon, had similar experiences. In 2013, he travelled to Kenya for a week to help a US company collect data for a medical facility it supported. He carried cash and relied on his host to pay for expenses.

His GTBank dollar card worked inconsistently on later trips to the UK and the US. In 2018, while travelling in France, the card failed one day. Ucheaga handed cash to another traveller, who paid with a foreign fintech card.

By then, both founders had experienced the limitations of Nigerian bank cards abroad. Their travels also exposed them to new opportunities and influenced how they worked.

Ayorinde said he conceived the idea for his first business in Kenya, which later brought him back to Nigeria to build it.

“My best ideas come when I’m not in Nigeria,” Ayorinde said. “I think I started to realise that if I really wanted to rest, it was going out of the environment that I’m already used to and being in a whole different environment. That was rest for me, and that got my brain thinking, because the first idea for my first business was right there in Kenya.”

To afford more trips, he stopped planning separate holidays. Instead, he extended work trips by three to five days and covered the additional costs from his savings. The UK was an exception because cousins could accommodate him, making spontaneous visits relatively affordable.

Ucheaga said travelling also changed his expectations of everyday life. In addition to the difficulty of making payments, he noticed differences in public services and infrastructure between Nigeria and other countries.

“It kind of opened my eyes to see how things work in different places,” he said. “Sometimes Nigeria just sells you the short end of the stick. You just assume that that’s how it is and that’s how it will be forever. But then when you travel around, and you see that people could get a better quality of life, they can demand more from the government, and the government can do better for the people.”

Years later, these experiences influenced the founders’ decision to build Timon and relocate from Nigeria to Kenya, where they believed they could serve travellers across multiple countries.

Moving to Kenya

South Africa was Ayorinde’s first choice when he began considering a move from Nigeria. He had visited Cape Town, liked it, and secured a South African work permit. He wanted to remain relatively close to home, approximately a six-hour flight away. He also considered the UK, but his application for a Global Talent Visa (GTV), the UK’s visa route for recognised talent, was rejected.

Kenya eventually won him over. Ayorinde had sold his previous business, PayForce, formerly known as CrowdForce. The business later helped him enter YC and was acquired by FairMoney in 2023; he therefore had savings to finance the move. On a visit to Kenya, he met founders who convinced him that Nairobi offered better opportunities.

“I felt that I connected better with people there,” he said.

He also observed that many venture capital firms had their main offices in Nairobi. In Europe, America, or South Africa, he felt he would be “just another taxpayer”.

Ayorinde returned to Kenya with his wife for three weeks over Christmas to test the move. By the end of the visit, she was convinced. The couple agreed to spend two to three years in Kenya and then spend several years in different countries.

Ucheaga was attracted by Kenya’s quality of life and growing technology ecosystem. He had spent years building businesses in Nigeria, including Clymb Technologies, an agent-banking startup. But he felt that building a global travel business required a clearer head than Nigeria allowed.

In Kenya, he found a different experience. When electricity failed, residents could call their power provider and have the problem resolved, sometimes within 30 minutes, he said. He also found that networking occurred outside formal business meetings. After work, he could play padel and meet investors or other founders on the court.

The relocation still involved immigration hurdles. Ucheaga said the founders initially considered Kenya’s digital nomad permit but ultimately pursued work permits with the assistance of an immigration lawyer.

The move gave both founders greater proximity to investors and an opportunity to build Timon beyond the Nigerian market. They launched the company in 2024.

A mobility problem that needed a solution

Ayorinde’s idea for Timon came from a currency exchange shop in London. During a UK trip, he went to exchange cash for pounds and saw an elderly man being issued a travel card. Curious, he asked why the man could not use his regular bank card.

The attendant explained that the travel card allowed users to hold different currencies and exchange money before a trip, avoiding repeated conversion fees. The encounter led Ayorinde to consider whether cards could be issued for specific purposes outside traditional banks.

“So I would say that travelling gives you better ideas,” Ayorinde said. “You see how people live their lives very differently from what you’re used to. It also sparks conversations and ideas.”

Ayorinde and Ucheaga had met in 2021 through an entrepreneurship programme at their church. According to Ucheaga, he was the first person Ayorinde called after selling PayForce.

They asked more than 20 people whether they still struggled to pay when travelling abroad. Many said they did. Ucheaga said Timon connects directly to Visa, the payments company and card-issuing network, rather than relying on bank infrastructure. Establishing that arrangement with Visa and a bank took more than 15 months. The dual requirement reflects how card issuance works outside the banking system: a startup needs both the network and a licensed bank behind it. It also puts Timon’s card in direct contrast with the bank-issued dollar cards that had failed both founders abroad.

The founders launched Timon in September 2024. By the second quarter 2026, the startup had processed more than $47 million in transactions and surpassed 100,000 users across 16 African markets, Ayorinde told Disrupt Africa.

Timon generates revenue through transaction and service fees, as well as revenue-sharing agreements with partners.

Ayorinde’s previous company, PayForce, was acquired by FairMoney in 2023. The acquisition was reported by TechCrunch.

Two founders, one visa

In July 2026, Timon secured an undisclosed investment from Alliance, a US-based crypto accelerator. According to Ucheaga, the founders had applied unsuccessfully twice and nearly abandoned their third application until an Alliance founder personally encouraged them to apply again.

They were accepted within hours of the interview. Alliance completed its due diligence and transferred the funds within two weeks, Ucheaga said.

“They move fast,” Ucheaga said of US investors. “They have a conviction. They move fast because they won’t lose this big opportunity. It’s almost like they can see into the future.”

The founders then faced the same visa limitation Ayorinde had encountered in 2016. Ucheaga could not attend Alliance’s in-person sessions in the US because his B2 visa, the US visitor category issued for tourism and personal visits, had expired years earlier.

“I couldn’t go for the trip because my own B2 visa had expired years ago,” he said. “Sadly, I didn’t have the foresight like Tomi [Ayorinde] did to rush when [US President] Trump was coming in to get his own, so I couldn’t make it. There were some online sessions, so I was able to join that, and it was helpful getting [in touch with] founders who Alliance funded before, who built great stuff, learning from them as well.”

Ucheaga’s experience reflects a broader obstacle to African mobility. According to the African Development Bank’s 2025 Africa Visa Openness Index, which measures how easily Africans can travel across the continent, African travellers needed visas in advance for 51.1% of possible country-to-country travel combinations within the continent, up from 47.1% in 2024. The increase means border paperwork within Africa tightened year on year, even as payment tools made moving money across those same borders simpler.

The cost of travel therefore extends beyond flights, accommodation, and foreign-exchange charges. Delays or restrictions on entry can determine which professional opportunities a traveller is able to pursue in person.

Ayorinde and Ucheaga have built a business that helps Africans spend money abroad. The Alliance experience, however, demonstrated the limits of what their product could solve. Both founders had secured places in the accelerator, but only one could make the trip. Timon’s card is built to smooth one half of the travel equation—spending money abroad—while the other half, entry itself, remains outside any startup’s control. How far the company extends its 16-market footprint, and whether the visa regimes that shaped its founders’ story loosen or tighten, are the developments most likely to define its next chapter.