• Groundbreaking Solutions Won’t Come From Copying Silicon Valley, But Understanding Friction In Africa

Omolade Samuel Oke is an entrepreneur, financial technologist, data expert and venture capitalist. Renowned for his exceptional achievement in the business world. He is the founder and CEO of Internopay Technologies Inc, a financial technology firm that allows local and global businesses handle international payments and procurement seamless. He founded the technologies company on December 6, 2021, in Vancouver, Canada. Fueled by a deep-seated passion for fostering financial inclusion across Africa and a vision to spearhead future advancements in financial technology, Oke Omolade founded Internopay Technologies Inc on December 6, 2021, in Vancouver, Canada. The company has been at the forefront facilitating seamless liquidity provision and cross-border payments and facilitating procurement across borders. Subsequently, on July 27, 2022, Oke Omolade expanded his ventures into cross-border payments within Africa with the establishment of Peak Capitals in Nigeria. This pioneering company is dedicated to addressing payment challenges and enhancing liquidity in frontier and emerging markets. His illustrious journey is adorned with prestigious awards, including the Royal African Leadership Awards 2024 bestowed on him by the Ooni of Ife on July 13, 2024. Additionally, he was honoured at the Global Sustainability Summit and Awards by the House of Lords in the United Kingdom on March 28, 2024, and recognised as one of the 100 Most Influential Young Africans by the Pan-African Youth Leadership Foundation in Accra, Ghana on April 13, 2024. He spoke with journalists and GREGORY AUSTIN NWAKUNOR was there.

The fintech space is crowded with well-funded competitors. What’s your sustainable competitive advantage, and how do you avoid becoming commoditised as a payment processor?
OUR advantage is not just in the knowledge of how liquidity works, but also in liquidity as a service. Anyone can build a payment gateway. The moat is in holding and intelligently deploying local currency liquidity across 100+ corridors to guarantee settlement finality and best rates, 24/7. We avoid commoditisation by embedding our infrastructure. We don’t just serve businesses, we empower and power other fintechs with liqudity infrastructures, banks, and global platforms needing to operate in these complex markets. We are the compliance and liquidity engine they build upon. Our competitive edge is the depth, reliability, and intelligence of our network something that cannot be replicated by simply layering software on unstable foundations.

As a venture capitalist yourself, what do you look for in fintech startups that you wouldn’t have appreciated before building your own company? How has been an operator changed your investment thesis?
I now have a visceral appreciation for founder tenacity in the face of regulatory friction and operational ingenuity in unit economics. Before, I might have over-indexed on TAM and tech brilliance. Now, I look for founders who have a nuanced, almost gritty understanding of the regulatory jungle and who are obsessed with the physics of their business model, how cash truly flows, the cost of customer acquisition not just in dollars but in time and trust, and how they build defensive operational workflows. My thesis shifted from “what can be disrupted” to “what can be built that is fundamentally new and necessary.” I invest in builders of foundational layers, not just front-end applications.

Fintech requires significant capital for liquidity, compliance, and technology, how do you balance growth investment with building a sustainable, profitable business model?
We treat capital allocation with surgical precision across three buckets: Defensive, Offensive, and Foundational. Defensive capital (liquidity reserves, compliance licenses) is non-negotiable; it’s our integrity budget. Offensive capital (sales, marketing, new corridors) is scaled based on proven unit economics, we only enter a new corridor when we can model its path to profitability within a set timeframe. Foundational capital (core tech, data analytics) is our constant investment, typically 15-20 per cent of revenue. The balance comes from a ruthless focus on corridor-level profitability. We don’t chase vanity growth; we scale where we have a tangible, sustainable edge.

You founded your fintech company on December 6, 2021, in Vancouver—during a period of global uncertainty. What specific gap in the international payments landscape convinced you this was the right moment to launch, and why Vancouver as your base?
The pandemic exposed a critical gap, the asymmetry between digital acceleration in emerging markets and the archaic, slow correspondent banking system. SMEs and freelancers in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra were fully digitally enabled but hit a brick wall when receiving or sending international payments. The moment was right because the pain point had become acute, and trust in digital-first solutions had peaked.

Vancouver was a strategic choice. It’s a global hub with a deep talent pool in financial technology and compliance, a stable regulatory environment to build from, and a strategic time zone bridging Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It provided the credibility and foundation to build a global company, not just an African one.

It was a period the Central Bank of Nigeria wasn’t ready to take the pain of democratizing international payments and developing a dynamic regulatory framework to cater for innovations in the space, they could not comprehend why and how we were having billions of Naira and moving it around in split seconds, they went as far as blocking 11 of our bank accounts all these influenced relocating for a while as we saw victimization knocking.

Beyond access to services, what does meaningful financial inclusion look like to you, and how do you measure whether your solutions are truly transformative versus incrementally helpful?
Meaningful financial inclusion is about agency and participation in the global digital economy. It’s not just having a wallet, it’s a Nigerian designer being paid instantly in Naira by a client in Toronto at a fair rate, or a Kenyan farmer’s cooperative procuring fertiliser from India without losing 10 per cent in hidden fees. We measure transformation through economic multipliers, the increase in cross-border trade volume for our SME users, the reduction in their cost of capital, and the velocity of money within their businesses. If we see them growing faster, trading more confidently, and creating more jobs because of our platform and not being defrauded or cheated, then that’s transformative. Incremental is making a process cheaper, transformative is enabling a new business model.

If bulk of the raw materials that power industries around the world are sourced from Africa, then the businesses involved in such should not just be seen as African businesses but as global businesses, If we want Africa to catch up with the rest of the world, then we have to act like the rest of the world.

International payments and procurement involve navigating regulatory frameworks, currency volatility, and compliance requirements across multiple jurisdictions. Walk us through your most complex implementation—what market was it, and what made it work?
Our most complex implementation was establishing an Africa-to-China corridor for procurement payments. We have faced stringent Chinese capital controls and have caused a lot of payments and bank accounts being blocked and treated as laundering and China does not have a democratic process involved to challenge such, the Chinese government is yet to take a legitimate stand on cryptocurrencies, which power a lot of liquidity into the country. Diverse and sometimes opaque regulatory regimes across Africa, makes us have to go to each of the countries for licenses which is far different from what is obtainable in a continent like Europe.

On currency volatility, we have had very terrible days in the past, days NAIRA has lost so much value from 1100 to 1600, we once recorded losses of over 500 million Naira, I went to sleep, just to escape from the reality of it and hoping everything goes back to factory setting before I wake, but no miracles, went to the hospital to check my BP and if I were hypertensive, the result came out normal, experiences like this made us evolve from holding liquidity for sometime to handling conversions in real time, no matter the volume involved. On compliance, we realised the nefarious activities like kidnapping, stealing and diverting the government treasury and all are usually hidden through formal channels. Hence the need to see ourselves as part of a system that must never allow such to keep thriving, We have very strict frameworks for Politically Exposed Persons, we evaluate and monitor payments end-to-end ensuring each payments that goes through our platform aren’t for hidden purposes, we go as far as reviewing payment beneficiaries, their emails, websites, purpose of payment, UBO’s among others, we have all these reviewed by automated compliance tools and still allow it go through manual reviews. If Internopay ever considers a new CEO, Compliance head will be my most preferred candidate.

Traditional banks have infrastructure, regulatory relationships, and trust. What technological advantages allow your platform to compete, and where do you see the biggest opportunities for disruption in the next three to five years?
Our core advantages are API-first architecture, real-time liquidity management, and AI-driven compliance. While a bank’s infrastructure is monolithic, ours is modular and API-driven, allowing for seamless integration and rapid iteration. Our systems monitor and rebalance liquidity pools in real-time, something legacy systems cannot do. Our compliance engine uses AI to contextualize transactions, reducing false positives and friction while improving security.

The biggest disruption in three to five years will be in B2B embedded finance and the rise of regional liquidity hubs. We’ll see payments disappear as a standalone function and become embedded directly into platforms for logistics and e-commerce. The winners will be those who provide the underlying “liquidity mesh” that makes this embedding possible, reducing the need for traditional bank accounts.

How do you maintain quality and compliance during rapid scaling?
Key metrics are network GDP, corridor health, and compliance integrity. The total economic value facilitated through our platform. It measures our ecosystem’s real impact. I have always seen our activities of companies aggregated to form macro-economic data, I love to see Internopay’s volume summed to mean something great for the economy.

Settlement success rate, cost trajectory, and volume growth per active corridor. The joy of seeing other businesses thrive, less or no complaints and safeness of their funds means so much. Decline rate analysis and time-to-approve for compliant transactions. We aim for a “frictionless for good actors, impenetrable for bad actors” standard.

You’ve received remarkable recognition—from the Royal African Leadership Awards by the Ooni of Ife to being honored by the UK House of Lords. How do these accolades shape your sense of responsibility to the communities you serve?
These honours are profoundly humbling because they are not just for commercial success, but for impact and representation. Coming from one of the institutions and personalities i respect and reverend the most considering my cultural heritage. They remind me that this work is larger than the company. The recognition from traditional institutions like the Ooni’s court signifies that technology is being embraced as a true tool for African prosperity and sovereignty. I have followed the OONI of Ife in several capacities within and outside of Africa for economic,traditional and international affairs. The House of Lords honor underscores the global importance of building bridges, not walls.

It creates a deep sense of responsibility to be a steward, not just a builder. It means our actions must always ladder up to tangible community advancement, creating jobs, enabling businesses, and advocating for policies that foster inclusion. The platform amplifies our voice, and with that comes a duty to use it for the ecosystem’s benefit.

Being named among the 100 Most Influential Young Africans carries significant weight. What message do you hope your journey sends to young African entrepreneurs, particularly those in underserved regions?
Solve the problem you know intimately and through it you can make an indelible impact on our continent and advance humanity. The most groundbreaking solutions won’t come from copying Silicon Valley, but from deeply understanding the friction in our own country and continent. The 1logistics puzzle in Kigali, the payment headache in Kano, these are billion dollar opportunities disguised as daily frustrations. Don’t underestimate your lived experience. Build from the ground up, with global standards but local insight.

The world needs your perspective, not a duplicate of theirs. Lets see ourselves as co-creators with God, he has given us all the talents needed, lets connect with it and let us move this continent forward.

Looking at emerging technologies—blockchain, AI, central bank digital currencies—which innovations do you believe will most fundamentally reshape cross-border payments in Africa over the next decade?
The most fundamental reshaping will come from the interaction of Artificial intelligence and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Blockchain’s promise for cross-border payments is still hindered by volatility and scalability for mainstream use. I see blockchain bridging trust and transparency outside of the financial technology space.

However, Artificial Intelligence will revolutionise risk pricing, fraud detection, and personalised liquidity management in real-time. CBDCs, when designed for interoperability could provide the missing public infrastructure for instant, cheap settlement between countries. Imagine AI managing dynamic currency swaps between a digital Nigerian Naira and a digital Kenyan Shilling on a shared CBDC platform. These combinations could disintermediate layers of legacy infrastructure, making cross-border payments as seamless as sending a text.