Meru, a global fintech platform, has expanded its money transfer and financial services to 15 African countries, allowing users to send money directly to bank accounts and mobile money wallets across Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Benin, Togo and Cameroon.
Amilcar Erazo, Co-Founder and CEO of Meru, announced the expansion, framing it as a significant milestone in the company’s broader ambition to build financial infrastructure that operates independent of geography.
“Meru is expanding to Africa,” Erazo said. “Starting today, Meru users can send money directly to bank accounts and mobile money wallets across 15 African countries.”
Beyond remittances, the expansion gives African users access to Meru’s broader global financial platform.
“This is a big milestone for us,” Erazo said. “Our users across Africa can also use Meru to access a global financial platform. They can get US and European virtual accounts, hold and move dollars globally, use Visa cards, earn yield, invest and access financial services that traditionally depend on where you live.”
The move allows Meru to enter a market where cross-border payments are often slow, costly, and fragmented due to incompatible mobile money systems and banking networks.
This challenge has influenced Africa’s fintech landscape, with companies like M-Pesa, Flutterwave and Chipper Cash focusing on bridging these gaps.
By integrating both traditional bank accounts and mobile money wallets into a single platform spanning 15 countries, Meru is positioning itself to compete directly in a payments corridor that international remittance providers have often struggled to serve efficiently, given the continent’s uneven banking penetration and the dominance of mobile money in many markets.
Erazo described the company’s underlying philosophy as rooted in a rejection of geography-based financial exclusion.
“We started Meru with a simple belief: your financial life shouldn’t be limited by the country you were born in or the financial system you happen to live in,” he said. “Since then, we’ve been building the infrastructure to make money truly global.”
The African launch fits into a deliberate, sequential expansion strategy the company has pursued across continents.
“Latin America, United States, Europe, Asia and Africa,” Erazo said. “And we’re nowhere near done.”
Meru appears to have gradually built its regulatory, banking, and compliance infrastructure market by market, rather than pursuing a simultaneous global rollout, which is common among fintechs dealing with various licensing, anti-money-laundering and banking partnership challenges.
Erazo was explicit that Meru’s ambitions extend well beyond a conventional payments app.
“Our ambition isn’t to build another fintech app,” he said. “We’re building a global financial platform for anyone, anywhere.”
The expansion arrives amid intensifying competition in Africa’s cross-border payments space, as both homegrown African fintechs and international entrants race to capture a market shaped by rising diaspora remittance flows, growing smartphone penetration and persistent demand for dollar-denominated financial products in economies exposed to local currency volatility.
For African users, platforms offering direct access to US and European virtual accounts, dollar holdings and international card services represent a meaningful expansion of financial options historically available only to those with existing ties to international banking systems.
