Nigerian bank Carbon acquires Vella Finance, launches new AI banking platform for SMEs
Microfinance bank Carbon is launching a new banking platform for businesses in Nigeria following its acquisition of fintech firm Vella Finance, which the bank has purchased through its parent company, One Credit Limited, for an undisclosed sum.
Carbon buys Vella Finance to launch new banking platform
Founded in 2021, Vella Finance provides on and off-ramp infrastructure and tools to enable cross-border payment collections, payouts, and treasury and revenue management among SMEs in Africa. It also offers a transactional analysis feature that uses AI to provide insights into a business’s spending habits.
Following the acquisition by Carbon, the fintech’s solutions will now be utilised as part of the new Carbon Business banking platform. The companies add that Vella Finance will transition its business customers to Carbon Business and will “offer individual customers the option to upgrade to business accounts”.
The platform will enable businesses to access loans, create sub-accounts for the purposes of financial organisation, and automate and split income streams into said accounts.
Carbon has also tapped Vella Finance’s AI capabilities to incorporate transaction analysis into its new business platform, which it claims will afford “deep insights into your financial transactions, enabling smarter decision-making and growth strategies”.
Ngozi Dozie, who co-founded Carbon in 2012, says the bank is encouraging the use of AI internally, as well as among its customers, and claims to have applied the technology “from accounting and finance to human resources, operations and engineering”.
Speaking on the acquisition, Mark Afolabi, co-founder and CEO of Vella Finance, says that amid “trying times for businesses in Nigeria”, combining the fintech’s and the bank’s abilities will “provide businesses a platform that provides AI-driven insights into their transactions, low-cost accessible loans and the power of AI models built into the platform to help with any business challenge”.
